


Better Than a Grave or a Hearse

by iaquilam



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kevin is perpetually Shook, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Past Sexual Abuse, Raven!Neil, andrew's pov, i mean these are the foxes, neil kills like five people with his sass so you have that to look forward to, riko is his own warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-09-25 11:31:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 41,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9818480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iaquilam/pseuds/iaquilam
Summary: “What do you think of the Ravens’ new player?”“He is nothing to me,” Andrew says, staring up at the ceiling, and then amends, “he can’t keep his mouth shut.”Renee hums in agreement. “He doesn’t seem bad for a Raven.”“Guns don’t seem bad until you shoot them.”“Do you think he’s going to end up shooting someone?”"I think that anyone who can’t keep their mouth shut is a liability and a danger.”Or, Riko is hellbent on bringing Kevin back to the Nest, Andrew is hellbent on stopping him, and Neil Josten is hellbent on making problems for everyone involved.





	1. Tired of the Way Things Have Been

**Author's Note:**

> So the origin story for this fic is basically me looking at the Raven!Neil tag on ao3, thinking, "you know what the fandom doesn't need more of? Raven!Neil fic," and then proceeding to outline an entire Raven!Neil fic. I haven't written any fic for the aftg fandom before, so I'm sorry if this is ooc or anything!! Andrew is absolutely the hardest character to write in the universe!!
> 
> The timeline for some of the canon events (i.e., Thanksgiving at the Hemmick's house, which happens before this fic takes place at Easter of Andrew's freshman year in this au) is a little different, obviously, to account for Neil being a Raven, etc. If it's super confusing just leave a comment and I'll try and clarify it!
> 
> The title of the fic comes from Sedona by Houndmouth which isn't even a song i associate with andreil but which just seemed perfect for this fic, and the title of this chapter comes from Believer by Imagine Dragons which is totally a andreil song. Everything belongs to Nora, obviously!!ok that's all sorry for rambling enjoy the fic

            The first time the world sees Neil Josten play Exy, everyone stops to watch.

            Andrew Minyard has never been very concerned with what everyone else is doing, and so the closest he’s willing to get to watching Josten actually play is standing in the same room with Kevin, who is huddled obsessively in front of the TV, soaking up every score. Every time Andrew glances at him, he allows himself a moment of brief, mild annoyance before flicking his cigarette ash out of the window. For some unfathomable reason that Andrew refuses to spend time pondering, this game is important for Kevin to watch. It’s also highly probably that this game will cause Kevin to have some form of a mental breakdown.

            Hence Andrew’s presence.

            “Who is the new one?” He knows the Ravens’ new striker’s name, but he doesn’t like the look on Kevin’s face right now—that blanked-out line between appreciating a game and getting lost in a bad memory.

            Kevin jolts and then turns to shoot him a glare. Andrew impassively exhales a cloud of smoke into the room rather than out the window in response.

            “That’s bad for your health, you know,” Kevin snaps. “How do you expect to play Exy if you can’t breathe properly?”

            “I enjoy smoking a good deal more than I enjoy Exy,” Andrew says, flicking more ash out the window. “If it comes down to it I won’t have a problem choosing. Answer my question.”

            “Neil Josten.”

            “Good boy,” Andrew says mockingly.

            “He’s good, but he’s not compatible with—with Riko. With a lot of the Ravens. His style would be better suited for a different team.”

            “Did I ask?”

Kevin frowns. Andrew can practically feel the desire for a strong drink coming off of him. “You should care about this. He’s tiny, but Riko’s trained him to be a force as formidable as a much bigger player. What he lacks in size, he makes up for in speed and ferocity. I just hope—I mean, I wonder how they’re going to use him.”

            “It will be riveting to watch. I’ll be sure not to.”

            “The very least you could do, Andrew—”

            Andrew tunes him out. Kevin’s attention is no longer solely focused on the game, on his past abusers, on Riko. That’s all Andrew wanted, and now his job is done.

            He’s not interested in being told what he should care about, anyway.

***

            Perhaps as a result of watching the Ravens game, Kevin is especially bitchy at practice the next day. It’s equally likely that it’s merely his hangover—Kevin’s mental breakdowns rarely do not coincide with his drinking binges, and yesterday’s was no exception. Either way, Dan has to loudly and somewhat forcibly remind him who’s captain more than once, a fact Andrew is sure Kevin resents. Once or twice he glances at Andrew for support, but Kevin’s in no danger of losing anything but his dignity, and so Andrew just leans against the goalpost and watches them argue with a detached sense of satisfaction. He likes conflict. Thrives off of it, even.

            Finally, Wymack calls the practice off early and tells everyone to be in the locker room washed and ready to listen in an impractical period of time. Andrew, true to form, takes his time and walks in once everyone else has already settled down. He meets everyone’s eyes with a blank stare before settling down next to Aaron, much to his brother’s surprise. There was a time when he wouldn’t have even glanced at his twin, but after the events of last Easter, something has been inexorably drawing them together. They both do their best to ignore it, but the closer Aaron’s trial gets, the more protective Andrew gets. They are bound by blood now—not their own, but Drake’s; bound by the blood that had smeared over Andrew’s legs and soaked Aaron’s hands.

            But Andrew has never been much given to thinking about things like these. He just sits on the arm of Aaron’s seat, where he can see Kevin standing by the door, and crosses his arms.

            “Now that Andrew has been good enough to join us, we can get to business,” Wymack says irritably. “I have some news that you punks aren’t going to like, so I’ll just get down to it.” He looks around the room. “Kevin, you might want to sit down for this.”

            “I’ll be fine,” Kevin says with an eye-roll that’s barely controlled.

            “Your funeral.” Wymack drums his fingers against the back of the chair in front of him and says, “Our district has had some changes. We’ll be facing up against the Raven this season.”

            There’s a long, dramatic silence. Andrew begins to reconsider his seating choice. He should have been closer to Kevin after all.

            “Like—before the semi-finals?” Nicky asks, his voice hushed.

            “Don’t be ridiculous,” Allison snaps. “We’re not making it to the semi-finals. Especially if the Ravens are in our district.”

            “I don’t appreciate your lack of team spirit, Reynolds,” Wymack says. “Nicky, to answer your question—yes, we’ll be facing off with the Ravens in the district games. I believe we’ll be playing them a few games in. Any other questions?”

            Kevin sits down heavily, but when Andrew looks at him, he looks more resigned than surprised. He doesn’t meet Andrew’s eyes.

            “I’ll take that as a no,” Wymack says to the hollow silences filling the locker room. “I don’t want anyone panicking about this, hear me? Everyone go relax, and don’t get too drunk tonight. We’re going to bring them our best game like we would with any other team. Just another team. Just a bunch of people playing a sport.”

            Everyone in the room knows that’s not categorically true, but no one feels like arguing with Wymack’s firm-set jaw and reassuring tone. Andrew would, if he was so inclined, but he’s too busy watching Kevin’s face go greyer and greyer. When everyone has filed out of the locker room, he walks over to where Kevin’s sitting.

            “You knew.”

            “Wymack told me this morning.”

            “You should have told me. I can’t protect you if I do not know what is coming for you.”

            “You found out soon enough,” Kevin snaps. “I’m going back to the tower.”

            Andrew levels him a flat stare that makes Kevin’s shoulders slump. Back when he was on his drugs, Andrew might have made a mocking comment about Kevin running back to his hole, but sober, he can’t bring himself to care enough. If Kevin wants to hide, he’ll let him hide. Andrew promised protection, not courage.

            As they walk back out to the parking lot where Nicky and Aaron are waiting, Renee hails Andrew from the window of Matt’s truck: “Are we still on for tonight?”

            Andrew briefly considers the merits of keeping his skills in shape versus keeping an eye on Kevin, but it’s not really a choice. Duty first, always duty first. “No.” He jerks his head towards Kevin’s distraught figure in a gesture so miniscule someone else would have missed it. Renee merely nods in understanding and rolls the window back up as the truck pulls out of the lot, rumbling like an earthquake. Andrew doesn’t know how Matt makes it through one day in that piece of shit.

            “Get in.”         

            Kevin gets into the passenger’s seat, head bowed. Nicky and Aaron climb into the back, Nicky still hushed and wide-eyed, Aaron his usual sullen self. Andrew revs up the engine, already cataloguing the minutes that have passed since Wymack’s announcement and the present and calculating how much longer Kevin can go without alcohol. Hours, minutes, seconds—each broken down and remembered in perfect detail. Andrew’s life is a series of mechanized moments that turn themselves into mass-produced weapons, each the same and the same and the same as the last.

***

            As it turns out, Kevin does end up having a breakdown, but it doesn’t take place at the bottom of a vodka bottle. It takes place past midnight on the field of the Foxhole Court, in between the perfectly aimed shots Andrew keeps blocking.

            “Do you realize that you are wasting your time here,” Andrew says as he flicks his wrist and sends the ball flying again. He doesn’t phrase it as a question, because it’s not one. He already knows the answer.

            “Improving is never a waste of time,” Kevin grits out, which is exactly the answer Andrew had been expecting. “We’re never going to beat the Ravens if we don’t practice. We’re pathetic as it is.”

            “We are not going to beat the Ravens no matter what we do,” Andrew says. “I will not stand here and enable your slow but inexorable descent into a mental breakdown. You are capable of doing that by yourself.”

            He stops shutting Kevin out and throws his racket to the ground, stepping out of the goal just in time to avoid Kevin’s next shot.

            “Andrew.” Kevin’s voice is hoarse from exhaustion and fear.

            Andrew pauses but does not turn around.

            “Riko will tell me to come back to the Ravens.”

            “You won’t go.”

            “I’ll have to. If he tells me to, I’ll have to go.”         

            “You will not.” Andrew does not deal with _if_. He deals in promises and ultimatums. Kevin will not go back to the Ravens because Andrew will not let him. It is as simple and as complicated as that.

            “Andrew—”

            “Kevin. You will not go.” He turns around. “You know what our deal is. I will not let Riko touch you.”

            Kevin looks at him, desperate for confirmation. “We don’t have a chance of beating them.”

            “Of course not. That does not matter. What matters is that after the game, you will still be a Fox. That is what matters, and that is what I promised you.”

            “If we don’t beat them, everyone will know—” Kevin takes a deep shuddering breath. “Everyone will know I’m nothing without him. They have Josten on the court now. They don’t need me, but I—I still need them.”

            Andrew looks at him for a very long moment, and then says, “Josten is nothing in this.”

            “Andrew, you don’t understand, he’s great, they won’t need me, we can’t beat them—”

            “ _Josten is nothing_. The Ravens are nothing. You left them, you’re gone, you’re safe. You are a Fox now.” He turns around again and starts walking towards the locker rooms. “I’ll be waiting in the car.”

            “Andrew—”

            “You have five minutes.”

            Andrew lights a cigarette as he walks back to the car, letting the faintest rush of annoyance wash over him. Once upon a time he would have laughed at Kevin’s fear of the Ravens, but now it just fills him with slight irritation at Kevin’s lack of faith in him. Not that that’s entirely Kevin’s fault. Kevin has as little faith in the world as he has spine.

            Here is what Andrew knows: the universe has never given him a damn thing, and had it not been for Kevin, he would have put two middle fingers up at it a long time ago in the form of two slit wrists. Pre-Kevin, he had Nicky. He had Aaron. But they cared about him in the way one cares about broken things—with a wary eye and one finger on the trigger for the necessity of a mercy killing. Pre-Kevin, Andrew saw a very definite deadline; one where Aaron and Nicky no longer needed him, and Andrew could collapse into the black hole they all believed he was. Kevin was the first one to look at Andrew and say you may be _this_ , but some day you might be _that_. Andrew doesn’t want to be anything, but the idea of a future outside of his deals and promises means he might one day want _something_. So he allows Kevin to try and shape him into _that_ , and in return he will prevent Kevin from crumbling back into the shape of a victim.

            The deal: Andrew’s future for Kevin’s present. Andrew thinks of it as insurance. A _just in case_ for a future version of himself that may never exist.

            Kevin storms into the car exactly four minutes and fifty eight seconds after Andrew leaves the court. They drive back to the Tower in silence.

***

            The locker rooms are thunderous after the game—the Foxes are so used to failure that mediocrity feels like a win. _Two points, only two points,_ Dan keeps saying with an incredulous grin like the sun has somehow risen at midnight. Matt has his arms around her waist—“We have the best captain in the league and I’m dating her”—and is sporting the same jubilance. Allison looks like she’d known all along that they would lose by such a small margin, but when no one’s looking, she slips into a pleased grin of her own. Renee catches her eye and they exchange a quick smile before looking away; Allison probably safe in the knowledge that Renee won’t out her for having Exy-related emotions. Nicky is preforming a victory dance that is comprised mainly of stomping and hooting as he comes out of the showers. Seth and Aaron look as unimpressed as they no doubt feel—Seth especially because he and Allison are on an “off” cycle at the moment—but they aren’t infringing on the others’ celebrations.

            They’d beaten the Ravens by a mere two points after a brutal game that had been as rife with red cards as it had with bruises. The small margin is without doubt due to Kevin, but—

            “Hey, monster!” Dan calls across the locker room.

            Andrew turns to face her, one eyebrow raised a fraction of an inch in the largest admission of surprise he’s probably ever showed towards one of his teammates.

            “Thanks for tonight,” she says, tilting her chin up like she thinks he might start a fight in response. “You played like a champ tonight in that goal.”

            Andrew’s other eyebrow follows the first. “Wilds, I’m not sure you’re aware of this, but we lost.”

            Her chin tilts higher. “Don’t kill the mood, Minyard. This is a big deal, and you know it. Let me be grateful.”

            “Grateful for what?” Kevin emerges from the showers with a haunted expression, his hair plastered to his face and a towel in his hand.

            “I was telling your attack dog he did well today. And you did too, Day. We probably wouldn’t have made it without you two.”

            Kevin’s hollow eyes fill with annoyance. “We _lost_. And I know I’m good, you don’t need to tell me.”

            Dan throws her hands up in despair and turns back to Matt. There’s barely another beat of celebration from Wymack comes striding in with a stormy expression.

            “Listen up everyone!” he bellows without preamble. Everyone freezes. When he’s sure of their undivided attention, he lowers his voice and continues. “The Ravens have scheduled a press conference after the game. We’ve just been invited to join them. We won’t have to interact with them, we won’t have to sit at the same table, we won’t have to take their bullshit. Hopefully. We just have to sit there and look pretty and answer questions.” There’s a paralyzed silence. His gaze sweeps the room like the wrath of God. Andrew hopes Renee hears that blasphemous thought. “Lucky for you punks, you won’t have to do it if you don’t want to. I told them we’d only do it if a majority of the team wanted to. So let’s have a vote, all right?”

            “I thought this wasn’t a democracy, it was a dictatorship,” Nicky quips, quoting one of Wymack’s most often used responses to the Foxes’ complaints about how no one liked doing early morning drills.

            “Shut it, Hemmick. Hands up if you’re against going to press conference.”

            Renee, Aaron, Seth, and—unsurprisingly—Kevin raise their hands.

            “All right. Hands up if you want to go.’

            Dan, Matt (after looking at Dan for confirmation), Allison, and Nicky all raise their hands. Andrew sits back and crosses his arms, vaguely amused for a reason he can’t quite pinpoint.

            “Minyard!” Wymack barks. “You don’t get to not vote.”

            “I voted,” Aaron says sullenly.

            “I was talking to your problem of a brother. Andrew, you have to vote.”

            “You’re the tiebreaker,” Nicky supplies helpfully.

            “I’m also indifferent on the issue at hand,” Andrew says, leveling him a bored stare that Nicky cringes under.

            “I don’t give a shit what you think about it. Toss a coin if you want. Just vote,” Wymack says. “We have fifteen minutes to get out there if we’re going.”

            Andrew looks around the room, watching everyone watch him, and then settles his eyes on Kevin, whose white, drawn face has nothing but the conviction that Andrew will vote no.

            “I vote yes,” Andrew says.

            He’s never had much luck with running from the enemy, anyway. Fights are so much more fun when they’re head on.

            It pretty much goes as he’d expected to. Riko makes polite, malicious jabs at Kevin, Kevin hangs his head and doesn’t say much, and Dan keeps trying to steer things back on track. The other Foxes don’t talk much unless they get a direct question; they seem to understand that this is not their battlefield to fight on. The other Ravens don’t talk at all, probably because risking Riko’s wrath is not worth having your own opinion.

            Andrew watches it go down with the same indifference he’d promised back in the locker room, leaning back in his seat with his arms crossed over his chest. He’s itching for a cigarette and some ice cream, but both things are unattainable at the moment so he just pins down any journalist unfortunate enough to look like they’re about to ask him a direct question with an unwavering gaze and thinks about burning down the press hall. That method works for the first half of the press conference, but he is not so lucky once they pass the half hour mark.

            “I have a question for Andrew,” a journalist in the front wall says. He’s an obnoxiously tall man with impeccable blond hair and a broad smile, the sort of person who pats small children on the head and gives them candy so they don’t have to listen to what they have to say.

            Every single Fox turns to look incredulously at first the journalist, and then Andrew. Everyone knows that sports journalists love a good post-game controversy—that’s why they’re all dancing to the beat of this drum, after all—but few people are brave or stupid enough to try and provoke bad behavior out of Andrew.

            Andrew himself doesn’t move. He just turns the full force of his impassive stare onto the man and waits to see if he’ll have to kill someone by the end of this. The idea sounds rather appealing.

            “I was wondering,” the journalist says, which means that it’s going to be a rude question, “how your sobriety has affected your relationship with and performance in the team as a whole. We’re only now starting to see you play off your medication, and—” he quavers at Andrew’s blank yet threatening countenance. “Yes. That is the question.”

            There’s a long, ringing silence—quite a feat in a room full of journalists and athletes—while Andrew leans back further into his seat, crosses his arms tighter, and skewers the journalist with the full, burning force of his uncaringness. It’s not that he’s particularly offended by the questions, it’s just that it’s a stupid one and he doesn’t want to answer it. He’s dealt with enough stupid questions in his time. He doesn’t owe this man a damn thing.

            “Hi, yeah, excuse me?” someone says, their mouth too close to their microphone so that their voice is uncomfortably loud in the silent press hall. “I have something I’d like to say in response to that.”

            Everyone’s attentions shifts—for the moment—away from Andrew and back over to the Ravens’ table. Neil Josten is leaning all the way over his microphone like he’s never spoken into one before, peering through his fringe at the journalist with an unreadable expression.

            Out of all the people Andrew had thought he’d have to kill by the end of this, Neil Josten had not been one of them. The Ravens are supposed to be far too well-trained to speak out of line like this.

            “Yeah,” Neil says when everyone’s looking at him, “so I think that was a really rude question, to be honest, because it’s not really Exy related—you’re just trying to poke around in his personal life, and this is supposed to be about the game we just played? And before you try to argue it was about Exy: if you wanted to see how his sobriety affects his playing, you could have honestly just watched the game instead coming up with rude personal questions. Like, yeah, the Foxes lost, but it was a really good game, and it was by a small margin, and to be quite honest I think a good deal of that is thanks to Andrew, so if you’re wondering how being off the pills influenced his Exy, I can answer with my professional and scientific opinion that it _really didn’t_. Like, were you expecting them to win now that he’s sober? We’re the _Ravens_ , so maybe lower your expectations a little. And honestly it’s none of your business how he gets along with his team, because they just played a good game and that’s what matters, so maybe next time you should focus on that instead of shit that’s none of your business, for fuck’s sake. ALSO, don’t think that I don’t remember you from our last game—you were that guy that asked Jean that gross question about how many girls he lays with his French accent. That was also none of your business, and honestly instead of trying to offend talented athletes who will one day make more money than you ever will with your gotcha journalism, you should spend some time trying to get laid yourself, because I honestly doubt any woman would ever sleep with you while your hair looks like that, but I’m not going to continue on that tangent because _unlike some people_ I don’t care to embarrass strangers in a crowded press hall by calling them out on their personal business—”

            Andrew sort of tunes him out after that, because it’s actually even more entertaining to watch the journalist slide further and further down into his seat with flaming cheeks and an almost visible desire to immediately disappear off the face of the earth. Andrew has to take a moment to admire Josten’s skill—an antagonistic glare usually does the job for Andrew, but this is a different game entirely. It’s such an enthusiastic, detailed, well-crafted dismantling of an opponent that it would have enjoyable to listen to no matter who it was attacking or defending.

            “—so _next time_ maybe take a moment to reevaluate your own life before trying to drag someone else’s through the dirt in public, and _while you’re at it_ , maybe try and focus on Exy, because that’s what we’re all here for,” Josten finishes after what must have seemed like a lifetime for the unfortunate journalist. He leans back from the microphone, resolutely avoiding everyone’s gaze—including, Andrew notices with something like interest, Riko’s smoothly annoyed glare.

            The same ringing silence that had filled the hall before Josten had spoken expands to fill it again, this time a good deal more shocked.

            “I think we’re out of time,” Wymack says cautiously after the silence has gotten uncomfortably long. “Is that right? I think that’s all we have time for.”

            There seems to be a general consensus on that, and everyone hastily packs their things and clears the conference room. The Ravens, too distracted by the misbehavior of one of their own, even forget to direct a sneering comment or glance at the Foxes as the teams leave their respective tables. For that, at least, Andrew is grateful—Kevin’s face is white and tense enough as it is.

            When they’re back on the bus, Kevin settles into a seat closest to the window and stares out of it, his face empty as the stadium they’ve left behind. Andrew sits next to him and doesn’t ask any questions, just sips a bottle of Gatorade that will be his only sugar fix for the moment and reviews all the hidden bottles of vodka he has around the dorm. There should definitely be enough for tonight.

            Around them, the Foxes are still jubilantly talking about their not-victory, but Andrew can also hear a few comments about Neil thrown in there: _did you see the look on that reporters face? Can you believe someone actually stood up for the monster? Can you believe a Raven took the heat for one of us? When was the last time we heard a Raven who’s not Riko speak? Wasn’t that the most savage thing you’ve ever heard?_ Renee, her voice calmly repressive: _I think it was very nice of him_. Matt, his voice quietly gleeful: _I want to be his best friend._

            “Riko’s going to tear him apart,” Kevin says, staring down at his hands. His voice is impossible to read, even for Andrew.

            “Who?”

            Kevin shoots him a sideways glance, half-irritable. “Neil. He spoke out of turn today. We—the Ravens aren’t supposed to speak unless they get a direct question from a reporter or permission from Riko. And he was defending the opposing team, no less.” He looks back down at his hands. “He could never keep his mouth shut.”

            Andrew files away the information that Kevin knows and maybe cares about the Ravens’ new mouthy starting striker. “And?”

            “And so Riko will punish him,” Kevin says, and then turns back to the window and doesn’t say anything else.

            And Andrew files away that information too: that the Ravens’ mouthy starting striker will suffer for his defense of the monster.

***

            “I’m glad we made time for this, Andrew,” Renee says brightly as they walk shoulder-to-shoulder into the gym. “I’ve been missing our sessions.”

            Andrew makes a vague noise of agreement. They _have_ been neglecting their sparring sessions with all the Exy-related drama going on, and it _is_ nice to reinstate them now that they both have a few spare hours between classes, but unlike Renee, he doesn’t see the need to say all of this out loud. The good thing about Renee is that she has never taken his silences anything but expressions of things that do not need to be said.

            “Shall we?” she says, making a graceful gesture to the padded mats where they spar.

            “Ladies first,” Andrew says mockingly, because he knows she knows he doesn’t mean it, and because he knows it’ll make her roll her eyes and fight just that much harder.

            They get onto the mats and get into stance, Andrew’s knives left to the side with their shoes and Renee’s jacket. This is not, as some of the Foxes assume, an assurance of mutual destruction: it is a way to keep their destruction to a minimum. They pull out their fists instead of knives, or worse, words.

            Renee lands the first blow, a neatly placed elbow that strikes Andrew’s stomach and which would have knocked the wind out of him if he hadn’t tensed in anticipation of it in the millisecond between him realizing it’d gotten past him and it landing. He nods in brisk appreciation, putting a hand to his side to gauge the bruising that’ll appear later, and she tosses her rainbow hair off her shoulder like she’s acknowledging the cheers of a crowd.

            They go back at it in a little more seriousness now, more focused on their craft now that the stakes are higher; Renee eager to solidify her upper hand and Andrew ready to even the score. Yet the next few blows go in quick succession: Andrew, Renee, Andrew, Andrew. He’s about to land a fourth, but she sees it coming and dodges so swiftly she’s nothing but a blur for a miraculous moment.

            When the first round has played itself out and Renee has proclaimed herself the winner—a title Andrew grudgingly relinquishes from their last match—they take a water break and lay side by side on the gym floor, Renee eating a Luna bar, and Andrew eating a Twix.

            “That’s not very nourishing.”

            “Thanks, Kevin.”

            She purses her lips and takes another gulp of water. She likes to put fruit in hers, a habit Andrew finds both inexplicable and vaguely disgusting. There are strawberries in her bottle today.

            “What do you think of the Ravens’ new player?”

            “He is nothing to me,” Andrew says, staring up at the ceiling, and then amends, “he can’t keep his mouth shut.”

            Renee hums in agreement. “He doesn’t seem bad for a Raven.”

            “Guns don’t seem bad until you shoot them.”

            “Do you think he’s going to end up shooting someone?”

            “I think that anyone who can’t keep their mouth shut is a liability and a danger.” He finishes his Twix bar, and then narrows his eyes. “I was not aware that you were an avid follower of the Raven line up,” which translates to _why are you asking._

            “I was just wondering,” Renee says. “Seeing as he told off that reporter who asked you that rude question. You don’t have to have an opinion on him, though; that’s fine. Round two?”

            Andrew nods, and they get back up on the mats. Another good thing about Renee: she sometimes asks stupid questions, but she doesn’t mind when Andrew doesn’t want to answer. She’s one of the few people that understands Andrew does not owe the world the answers to stupid questions like _what do you think about the Ravens’ new player?_ Andrew does not think anything of him, as long as he and the rest of the Ravens leave Kevin alone, which Andrew knows they will not. But until then, Neil Josten is nothing to Andrew. He has enough problems as it is.

            He wins the second round of their sparring.

***

            Aaron’s presence in Andrew’s sessions with Betsy have become frequent enough that it’s not surprising to anyone when they both disappear into her room for an hour and come back out in one piece. But neither is it entirely unheard of that when Andrew leaves for his weekly session, he’ll glance at Aaron just to see his twin shake his head. Andrew never asks for explanations because he doesn’t need them.

            What had happened last Easter is, like the twins themselves, both very simple and very complicated. Andrew had come into that house for two reasons: Nicky, and the point he’d wanted to prove to himself nothing truly did matter to him anymore. As it had turned out, some things still do matter to him. Keeping Aaron away from Drake had mattered. His blood on his legs and the familiar ache deep inside him had mattered.

            It’d left Andrew with more bloody memories, fewer secrets, and no more pills to keep him grinning. It’d left Aaron with blood on his hands, an upcoming trial, and new streak of protectiveness that’s still trying to fight its way out of his resentment towards Andrew.

            The decision to start seeing Bee together had been a wordless one.

            Today is one of the days Aaron just shakes his head in response to Andrew’s unasked question, and so Andrew heads to Bee’s office alone. It’s just as well—he still values his one-on-one sessions with her, as necessary as the ones with Aaron are. There’s something about her soothing voice and the hot chocolates they share that are so much better when it’s just the two of them.

            Let it never be said that Andrew does not value his quality time with the people he cares about. He also loves long walks on the beach and John Legend love ballads.

            Bee is waiting for him when he opens the door, her curtains wide open to let in the day’s rich golden sunlight that pours through the window like honey and makes her lines of cut glass animals sparkle.

            “Andrew! Right on time. No Aaron today?”

            “No Aaron,” he says, dropping into the chair across from her.

            “Shall I heat up some chocolate?”

            He nods before she’s even finished her sentence, and she laughs, reaching under her desk for the tin of Ghirardelli mix he knows she breaks out only for him.

            “This is a new blend I thought we could try,” she says, showing him the label. “Turtle Fudge . . . can’t be bad, right? Oh, and of course—the marshmallows.”

            He settles deeper into his seat while she putters around putting together the cocoa. If someone like Andrew can be capable of feeling peace, this is as close to it as he can get: sitting here with the sunshine flooding the room and Betsy happily adding a fistful of marshmallows to his hot chocolate. It’s here that he’s the farthest from the terrible blankness that had gripped him on Easter when he’s seen Drake standing there with a bottle of whiskey, the farthest from the hollow, euphoric high he’d always been riding on his pills. Bee’s room empties him, but in a good way, like he’s washing out some of the bitterness that rattles around in his chest.

            “What are we talking about today?” she asks when she hands him his mug. He curls his fingers around it and shrugs. The golden silence can stay a while longer.

            There’s an endless moment where Andrew just tries to breathe in the peace deeply enough to silence the mocking, derogatory, ever-present narrative that runs through the back of his mind, flicking up flawlessly preserved memories and biting out vicious commentary. When he’s as close to silence as he’ll get, he tells her about the book he’s reading about the Kennedy assassination that he stole from Kevin and probably won’t be getting back. He relates, in great detail, the plot of _Sing Street_ , the pick from the Foxes’ latest movie night. He rattles off some Exy statistics that Kevin had forced into his head the other night. He runs over the pros and cons of Snickers vs Milky Way. It’s the most he’s spoken in a while, but when he finally falls silent again, so do his thoughts.

            The good thing about Bee is that she always seems to realize and acknowledge that she alone is the recipient of these musings, as inconsequential as they are. Andrew is a man of few words outside of this room, but here, with his cooling, thousand-calorie cocoa clutched in his hands and Betsy’s soft laughs and sighs arriving at all the right places in his stories, he makes the kind of small talk the world is constantly trying to pry out of him: not because she’s asking to hear it, but because she listens to it.

            The world has never gone to pains to make sure Andrew Minyard is comfortable, and that is why he feels safest in this room. Because Betsy does.

***

            Andrew has never been easily distracted, so he has to hand it to the Ravens for achieving another first: his already-waning attention to the game playing out in front of him has been overshadowed by his attention to the fact that Evermore’s full starting line-up is sitting in the front row of the Foxhole Court directly to the right of the home goal.

            In other words, mere meters from where he’s standing.

            Being so close to Riko Moriyama really, really rubs Andrew the wrong way.

            The only possible scenario in which Andrew attacking Riko would actually work: Andrew being able to run to the edge of the field without being noticed or intercepted, Andrew being able to surmount the admittedly fairly tall wall that separates the seats from the court, Andrew being able to tackle Riko without being tackled by one of the other Ravens first, and everyone else somehow not noticing or doing anything to stop him. It’s not that he particularly _wants_ to punch Riko in the face, but his fathomless apathy would like to have to deal with as few future Raven-related problems as possible, and punching him in the face might eliminate as least a few. But Andrew is good with numbers games, and he doesn’t like the odds on this one.

            In any case, Kevin is a striker, which means that he’s usually facing away from the home goal, so he may not see the Ravens until it’s too late in the game to really throw off his performance.

            The ball whizzes past Andrew’s head and slams solidly against the net. He hears Dan swearing at him loudly over the buzzing of the scoreboard, but he’s too busy watching Kevin turn around to glare at him. It’s hilarious to think that he could have prevented this from happening by paying attention—he’d played right into Riko’s hands, which he finds annoying.

            Kevin’s eyes land on the Ravens. Andrew does not deign to turn his head and see what Riko’s expression is, but Kevin’s face freezes over like ice. He is a deer staring down the barrel of a hunter’s gun, confused as to how it got here but filled with the knowledge that the chase is over.

            Then slowly, slowly, he turns to look at Andrew.

            Their eyes meet across the length of the field for a fraction of a second, and then Andrew scoops the ball up from the goal with his racket and fires it back at Kevin with unerring force and precision.

            Kevin, out of force of habit, catches it without flinching.

            That one motion snaps him out of it, and then the game is back in full force, Kevin shaky but focused, perhaps even playing better than he had before.

            It had been a test, for both Riko and Andrew, and Kevin knew it. He had passed Andrew’s, but what the verdict was with Riko remained to be seen.

            Andrew shuts down the goal after that to prevent Kevin from having an excuse to look back the Ravens again, and as a result, the Foxes win. The one-point lead everyone had thought would be fleeting carries them all the way to the sound of the last buzzer, and—

            If the post-Raven match jubilance had been overkill, this was stabbing a body an extra two hundred times just to be sure it was dead. The Foxes carry on like they’ve won the World Cup. Matt even sprints to the goal and throws up both hands to tempt Andrew into a high-five, which is both unusual and insulting, seeing as there’s no way Andrew would ever be able to reach that high. Renee has a slightly less offensive, very brief shoulder squeeze as a celebration, and after that Andrew refuses to get within a three foot radius of his team mates. They may be celebrating, but he has a vengeful Exy team to watch.

            As the Foxes walk back to their locker room, Andrew glances back at the row where the Ravens had been sitting.

            There’s one empty seat—not Riko, because Andrew can recognize him even from across the width of the field. But one of them is gone, and before he can tell which one it is, he’s swept up into the celebrations again, and then they’re in the locker room.

            The Foxes pile into the showers like there’s no tomorrow, practically screaming in their excitement.  Kevin drops heavily onto one of the locker room benches, and puts his head in his hands. Andrew sits on the bench across from him and waits, sliding a finger under one of his armbands absently.

            A set of footsteps, too light and even to be Wymack’s hurries down the hallway that leads into the locker room. Andrew thinks Abby, then, absurdly, Betsy, but instead—

            Neil Josten walks into the Foxes’ dressing room, balanced on the balls of his feet like he’s ready to sprint at any time but otherwise looking like he has every right to be there. He’s making a beeline for Kevin.

            Andrew springs to his feet instantly, blocking his path to Kevin before Kevin even has a chance to startle to his feet.

            “How did you get in here?”

            Neil stops a little over arm’s length away from Andrew and raises an eyebrow. “There’s more than one way of getting what you want, which you don’t seem to realize,” he says with a pointed glance at Andrew’s armbands. “I’m not here to cause trouble. Nice job in the goal today, by the way.”

            Then he ducks around Andrew’s outstretched arm without even brushing up against him, and walks over to Kevin.

            Andrew registers three things very quickly: first, that Neil is not approaching Kevin like he’s going to attack him. Second, that Neil noticed, either in the few seconds he’s been here or at some earlier, even briefer interaction, that Andrew has knives in his armbands. Third, that Neil is limping very painfully, and hiding it remarkably well.

            “Day,” Neil says, drawing up in front of Kevin with an unreadable expression, once again just out of arm’s reach.

            “Neil,” Kevin says, looking pained. “You shouldn’t—you can’t—did Riko send you?”

            A furrow appears between Neil’s eyebrows. Andrew notices two bruises on his face, one barely-visible one under his eye and another, darker one on the underside of his jaw. He steps in between him and Kevin again.

            “Step away,” he snarls, because Neil may not _look_ like a threat, but he definitely _is_ one.

            Neil takes two exaggerated steps backwards, looking exasperated. “Kevin, call off your henchman, will you? Riko didn’t send me. He doesn’t want us involved with this cat and mouse thing he has going on with you. He wants it to be between you and him.”

            “I do not believe you,” Andrew says.

            “ _Kevin_.”

            “Andrew, please,” Kevin says. “Neil isn’t—he’s not a—it’s okay.”

            Andrew assesses Neil for a moment, taking in his obviously unarmed form, his runner’s stances, and his well-suppressed limp. He makes the coldest eye contact with him as possible, and then, slowly, without looking away, draws a knife out from under his armband. He flips it between his fingers—Neil’s eyes follow it warily—and then moves aside just enough to let the two of them talk.

            “Thanks,” Neil says with an edge of sarcasm. “I did mean what I said about the game, though. That was some good work. Anyway, Kevin—long time, no see.”

            Kevin just nods, because he’s spineless, and a kid half his size with a stupid tattoo on his face can scare the shit out of him.

            “It’s been real fun at the Nest since you left,” Neil says. “Jean has some choice names he wants to call you, if he ever gets the opportunity. Riko’s hasn’t been so happy with you gone.”

            Kevin makes a low, pained sound.

            “You have not been making it easier for yourself with your big mouth,” Andrew snaps. “Play the blame game somewhere else, Josten.”

            “Thanks for the input. Let the adults talk in peace, will you?”

            “I’m not going back,” Kevin blurts out in one big rush. “I’m not going back, I’m not—” He chokes on the last word and falls silent, looking like he’s considering passing out.

            Neil tilts his head to the side. He has ice-blue eyes that would have seemed cold if there hadn’t been so much fire behind them. Even if he hadn’t seen his little outburst at the press conference, Andrew would have labelled him as mouthy.

            “I’m not asking you to,” Neil says finally. “I’m coming to tell you that you need to whip your team into shape, because if you don’t, Riko is going to make sure you never play with the pros.”

            “What?”

            “He has a press campaign ready to tear you into the dirt. He’s going to offer you a deal pretty soon, maybe at the winter ball thing all the teams go to. Either you come back to the Nest, or he’ll drag you and the Foxes through the mud so badly no professional team will ever want to take a risk on you.”         

            “So I should—”         

            “Start winning, so his strategy doesn’t work,” Neil says impatiently. “Tonight was a good start, but it’s not enough. If you start winning game after game, no one will be interested in what your old team has to say.”

            Andrew, so rarely surprised, has to admit that Neil Josten has pulled the carpet from under his feet. Who would have guessed that the Ravens’ loud-mouthed starting striker would turn out to be a traitor.

            “You’re helping me?” Kevin finally asks. “If Riko finds out—”

            “You know,” Neil says quietly, “that Riko isn’t who I’m afraid of.”

            “Guys, can you believe—” Nicky’s voice comes to an abrupt stop. “Is that Neil Josten?”

            Nobody answers.

            “Um, you’re not supposed to be in here,” Nicky says, sounding deeply unsure. The voices of the other Foxes filter in from the showers; everyone must be finishing up.

            “And you’re not supposed to let the ball past you if you’re a backliner, either, but that’s exactly what you did in the second half of the game about eight minutes in,” Neil says, without looking away from Kevin. “I’d work on my side passes if I were you.” 

            “You caught that?” Kevin says, sounding impressed. “I’ve been trying to tell him—”

            “Kevin,” Andrew says loudly, cutting him short.

            “Listen, Kevin, I can tell you what Ri—”

            “ _Français, s’il te plait_ ,” Kevin says quickly, and Neil switches over to speaking French midsentence so fluently that Andrew wonders if he, like Jean Moreau, is also a native speaker. Andrew doesn’t even speak French, but he knows Neil’s accent sounds damn near perfect.

            To Andrew’s annoyance, the past five minutes have made Neil Josten a problem to be solved: he’s a rebel Raven without a cause, a man willing sacrifice the privilege of being in one piece to defend a stranger to the press, a striker ready to take the hits for Kevin Day, a fluent French speaker with no clear loyalties and ice blue eyes that distract Andrew from looking down at the important things: his runner’s stance, his bruises, his limp. Neil Josten treats his body like a sacrificial lamb, and Andrew has yet to decide whose alter he’s on this time. He’s a bundle of unanswered questions made flesh, and while Andrew loves his puzzles, he also prefers to keep them closer than his enemies, and Neil Josten will disappear through that door again in a few minutes.

            “ _Je dois aller, mais j’espère nous pouvons parler encore, oui? Le roi ne vous prendra pas si c’est la dernière chose que je fais_ ,” Neil says, briskly, taking a few steps back. “ _Au revoir, Kevin_.”

            “ _Oui, au revoir_ ,” Kevin mutters.

            Neil steps around Andrew again—once again making sure not to brush against a single part of him—and says, “Thanks for letting me have a few minutes with him,” half-mockingly.

            “Watch your back, Josten,” is all Andrew says.

            “That’s all I do, Minyard,” Neil says, already heading to the door. “Good game tonight, you two. Oh, and you too, Hemmick. See you on the court.”

***

            Kevin drinks himself into a stupor that night and Andrew doesn’t stop him. May as well let him have his fun before the storm breaks.

            Someone else might have cowered before the battle coming up ahead of them, but Andrew is a soldier, and all he knows how to do is fight. So he is prepared to do just that: fight on blindly for as long as the world will let him. There is no other way to live.

            When Kevin falls asleep, exhausted and drunk out of his mind, Andrew opens up the fansite that archives all of the Ravens’ games and interviews.

            He has a problem to solve.


	2. How Long Will I Bleed?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello hello!! I return to satisfy all your sassy Raven Neil cravings (and yes, Neil does the most again in this chapter). First off, thank you so so sososososooo much to everyone who left kudos and commented on the first chapter i LITERALLY CANNOT BELIEVE how positive and amazing everyone was, you are all amazing and i want to hug all of you and you guys are the best. 
> 
> SECONDLY i think i told some people the chapter was going up last weekend and that obviously did not happen! I apologize!! I'm kind of in a family emergency situation thing at the moment so things got busier than anticipated. I was hoping to be able to update this fic every week, but i don't think i'll be able to commit to that given the situation, and so i'm going to stick to updating every other week. I hope that's ok with everyone! feel free to yell at me if i don't update every other week because i really want to stick to that. 
> 
> LASTLY the second half of this chapter is appalling unedited so if you see a spelling error/grammar mistake pls let me know; a writer who's a fast typer but who has no beta is a bad combination, trust me. oh, and the chapter title is from the song Gravedigger by Matt Maeson which is a fantastic Andreil song 10/10 give it a listen.

“No one’s interested in watching that, Kevin,” Dan says flatly. “It’s Friday night, and we deserve a break from Exy. We won last week, for fuck’s sake. We can afford to kick back a little, right?”

            “No, we can’t,” Kevin snaps. “We’re still pathetic by every team’s standards but ours. Winning one game does not mean we no longer have to work. We have start winning big, or we’ll be the underdogs that never made it.”

            Andrew observes this interaction with equal parts amusement and indifference. Watching Dan try to struggle against the brick wall that is Kevin’s commitment to Exy is not unlike watching an ant try to push down a tree. Kevin wants the Foxes—all of them—to watch the Ravens’ game tonight, and they will, or by God, he will die trying.

            It’d be hilarious if lives and careers and futures didn’t hang in the balance.

            The news Neil had brought Kevin had been strangely helpful—instead of trying to stay one step ahead of Riko all of the time, Kevin and Andrew now have something concrete to do: win. And if there’s one thing that Kevin is very good at, it’s winning. He can’t face down the Moriyamas or get within a two hundred foot radius of the Ravens without having a panic attack, but he sure as hell can force the Foxes into the shape of a winning team by sheer force of will.

            If Andrew was a different person, he would be grateful to Neil Josten for giving Kevin a plan for survival. As it is, he thinks about the night he spent memorizing the way Josten moved on the field and wonders if it was entirely because he may one day have to kill him. If Josten doesn’t do that on his own, that is—the Ravens’ new striker is as reckless on the court as he is off of it, throwing himself in front of slamming rackets and players twice his size for half a chance to grab the ball. It’s a pity the Ravens are programmed to give Riko all the glory shots, because Andrew’s fairly sure Josten would be a player to rival Kevin otherwise. Not that Andrew cares.

            “We can learn a lot from the Ravens,” Kevin says finally, and then hesitates. “Myself included.”

            Dan looks at him for a very long moment, and then nods. Maybe it’s because Kevin is—by necessity, but still—finally grouping himself with the other Foxes. Maybe it’s because Kevin is toning down the arrogance for once. Maybe just because she recognizes the desperate undertone in his voice and realizes that for whatever reason, this is important in the same way breathing is.

            “We’ll be there,” she says briskly. “Don’t expect this to be a regular thing, Day. You know I think the best way to learn is on the court, not in front of a TV set.”

            Kevin gives her a stiff nod of his own in return and does not thank her. It’s enough for her, apparently, because she turns away from the pair of them without further comment.

            “How does trying out some spine for size feel?” Andrew asks dryly.

            Kevin startles, like he’d forgotten Andrew has been standing behind him this whole time, and then scowls. “I don’t need your shit right now.”

            “On the contrary, you need my shit all the time, because it’s my shit that is keeping you alive,” Andrew says, rolling his eyes. “No big-mouthed midget with an Exy racket is going to change that.”

            “Are you talking about Neil? And where do you get off calling anyone short? I think he’s taller than you.”

            “My statement stands.”

            Kevin looks so exasperated that Andrew is vaguely surprised he doesn’t have steam coming out of his ears. “Do you think they’re really going to show up to watch?”

            “Against their better judgment, probably.”

            “If they know what’s good for them—”

            “They would not have joined this team. They will be there.” Andrew doesn’t say what he knows: that watching the Ravens play a match isn’t going to fix anything about the Foxes’ playing, but it very well might do something for their unity. And that needs as much repairing as their playing. Andrew doesn’t care much for bonding, but he does care for mathematics, protecting people, and upholding his deals, and bringing the team together fits in all three categories: bringing the team together equals winning equals keeping Kevin safe equals keeping his promise.

            So, bonding it is. Even if Kevin mistakes it for a lesson in Exy theory. But then again, Kevin mistakes life for a lesson in Exy theory, so nothing new there.

             Andrew wonders how Josten is going to endanger himself tonight.

***

            It’s nothing short of a goddamn miracle that all of the Foxes are crowded in the same room on a Friday night to watch Exy together. Andrew knows for a fact how much desperation and fear and pride-swallowing it took on Kevin’s part to pull them all together here, but it still seems impossible that it would happen at all. The Foxes have always been a fractured team; their individual issues and dark pasts and staunch loyalties have ensured that, and the result is their subpar performance on the court. So sitting here together is a step in the right direction—that is, the direction of making sure Kevin lives to see the New Year. That’s the only reason Andrew is here.

            It’s an away game for the Ravens, which Andrew is glad of—as much as he can be, anyway. Seeing the Nest would probably be too much for Kevin, who’s already on edge as it is. They’re playing some inconsequential team from North Carolina who they’re expected to flatten, but the commentators are hyping it like it’s the match of the century. They need _something_ to talk about, Andrew supposes.

            He’s so focused on watching Kevin instead of the game that he doesn’t even notice Josten is missing from the lineup entirely until one of the commentators says dryly, “Number four from the Ravens—what do you think happened to him, Mike?”

            “Well, the Ravens are known for their brutal drills, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he got an injury during practice. It couldn’t have been anything serious, or they would have put a statement. But I’m surprised that he’s not sitting on the benches to support his team.”

            “You’re right—we’ll see how the Ravens fare without their latest star, Neil Josten. The post-game press will certainly be less interesting without him.”

            Andrew’s attention snaps to the TV, and he spends a moment scouring the Ravens on the field before confirming for himself that there is indeed no Neil Josten playing tonight. The Ravens hardly look inconvenienced—the score is already in their favor—but Andrew knows from Kevin that the Ravens force their players onto the field no matter their condition, which means—

            Neil Josten has been punished to the point where not even the Ravens could feasibly make him play in public.

            Alternatively: Neil Josten is dead.

            Andrew finds himself unsurprisingly empty at either thought. He does not have emotion to waste to mouthy Ravens with ice-blue eyes who speak good French and stab their masters in the back at the first opportunity. Neil Josten is nothing to him, but—it would be _inconvenient_.

            Yes, _inconvenient_ is the word he’s looking for. Neil Josten has put this into action—this version of Kevin that is willing to fight because he finally knows how—and it would be _inconvenient_ if that was compromised.

            Andrew glances at Kevin, more out of habit than anything else, and finds him frozen. For God’s sake, Josten couldn’t have kept his mouth shut?

            Or maybe he had. Maybe he had just gotten found out. Andrew doesn’t imagine Riko would like his pets scampering away to warn his prey that he’s coming.

            Andrew shifts his weight to reach for his knives, a miniscule movement that no one notices but Kevin and Renee, sitting on either side him. Kevin startles and then looks at him for reassurance, as if he’s expecting Andrew to tell him that his rash replacement is okay and everything will be okay. He should know better. Renee just shoots him a calm glance and settles back in her seat, secure in the knowledge that he will not do anything. She should also know better. Andrew will fight the television set if he has to.

            (It’s unlikely that he’ll have to, but whatever. Even anger at an inanimate object and a missing player miles away is better than nothing at all.)

            Kevin is empty-eyed for the rest of the game.

***

            “I need you to tell me what Josten is to you, and how he fits into all of this,” Andrew says flatly when the last of the Foxes have filed out of their room. “If you want to do this, you have to leave the Ravens behind, and that includes Josten.”

            Kevin swallows and looks away.

            “Kevin.” Andrew impatiently slams open the window and light a cigarette. He has as little time for Kevin’s complex and agonizing emotional connections with the Ravens as he does for his irritating obsession with Exy. Both things are, if unchecked, going to get him killed.

            “Smoking is—”

            Andrew turns around and blows a cloud of smoke directly into Kevin’s eyes (or rather, in the direction of Kevin’s eyes, because they are hardly eye to eye). “Start talking, Day. You know what our deal is, and it does not include you keeping secrets from me.”

            “Neil’s story isn’t mine to tell.”

            “Wow,” Andrew remarks to the open window. “It’s almost as if he did not hear me the first time around. That’s funny, because I could have sworn he did.”

            “Andrew—”  

            “Secrets do not save lives, Kevin. Start talking.”

            Kevin swallows again and watches the smoke spill out of Andrew’s mouth and through the window. “His family sold him to the Moriyamas when he was young, like Jean. They were—” He takes a deep breath “—they were low level mafia people, they owed a debt—they used him to pay it off.”

            “Cute backstory,” Andrew says. “Explain why he is doing this for you.”

            “He’s always been—rebellious. He doesn’t fear Riko like most of the Ravens do. He’d probably take any chance to take him down—he wants out of the Ravens, and he’d probably take the risk of leaving, unlike Jean. I think—discrediting Riko is his way of carving a path out of the Nest for himself.”

            That rang true, at least partially. Kevin’s telling enough truth that Andrew will let him get away with it. “And you care about him because—?”

            Kevin looks away. “He’s—he made me believe it was possible to leave the Nest. He’s never been able to outrun his—the Moriyamas himself, but he always seemed to believe it was possible. I don’t know if I could have left if he hadn’t put that in my head.”

            “Cute,” Andrew says, turning away. “Let go of that, Day. Riko has enough power over you as it is without you being friends with one of his slaves.”

            “I’m _trying_ ,” Kevin mutters. “I’m going to bed now.”

            “You are going to watch Ravens games for the next three hours in bed,” Andrew corrects, and flicks his ash out of the window. “Remember what I said. Josten is nothing to you.”

            Kevin just turns away and disappears into the bathroom.

            So maybe Josten is shaping up to be a bigger problem than Andrew had anticipated. Whatever. It’s not as if Andrew hasn’t dealt with problems before. There’s always one way to cut through even the most complex Gordian knot: with a knife.

***

            There are many things Andrew is not interested in being: polite, helpless, heterosexual, well-liked—the list goes on. The Exy kickoff banquet—or, as Neil Josten had called it, _the winter ball thing_ , which somehow contains Andrew’s contempt of it so much better—represents being a fairly large number of those things, and so Andrew would rather not go. Sadly, the choice is not up to him, not because anyone would dare to make him, but rather because Kevin is going, and Andrew can’t let him go alone.

            Cue Andrew, pissed off and in a suit, wondering how much alcohol he’ll have to consume to make this even marginally enjoyable. He’s sulky and narrow-eyed, made even more irritated by Kevin’s drawn face and shaking knees. Most of the team has the good sense to stay away from him, and the ones that don’t—Kevin and Renee—at least have the good sense not to speak to him.

            Multiple Exy teams together in one hall should have been called a recipe for disaster from the very beginning. Add a pissed-off Andrew, a petrified Kevin, and a clenched asshole named Riko into the mix, and you may as well start counting down the minutes until the end of the world as you know it.

            But of course—of course of course of course—Andrew forgot to add one thing into his calculations.

            The variable that is Neil Josten.

            He’s stalking around with the rest of the Ravens, firmly glued to Jean’s side and sporting a real beauty of a black eye that goes nicely with his black suit. Andrew decides right then and there that black and red don’t suit him.

            Kevin, beside him, lets out an audible sigh of relief, and then an equally audible inhalation of terror upon seeing Josten and Riko, respectively.

            “Go to Renee and stick with the others,” Andrew says without looking at him. “Whatever you do, make sure you are never alone tonight.” Not that Kevin needs to be told that. But it’s worth saying, because these days things and people are changing so fast that Andrew feels the need to assert his control more than usual.

            “Where will you be?”

            “I have a bone that needs picking,” Andrew says simply.

            Kevin follows his gaze back to Neil, and then says, “Good luck with that.”

            “Doubting me does not suit you. Go to the others.” Andrew sets off at a steady, unhurried pace as he sees Josten peel away from the pack to get a drink.

            “Just a water, thanks,” he hears the taller man say just as Andrew pulls up short at the bar himself.

            “Are the Ravens not allowed to drink, or are you just personally opposed to having fun?” Andrew asks boredly, leaning his elbow up against the bar.

            Josten turns to face him with the carefulness of a person with bruised ribs. He’s moving rather stiffly in general, Andrew notices, and there are exhausted shadows under his unbruised eye.

            “It’s a personal preference,” he says with an edge that hovers between sarcasm and defensiveness. “One that I don’t expect you to understand.”

            “I’m not interested in understanding it,” Andrew fires back. “Neil, is it?”

            Neil rolls his eyes with an expressiveness that’s probably painful. “Please, you know my name.”

            “Cocky.”

            “I’ve been told that I can be.”

            “Is that how you got that shiner? Being cocky?”

            Neil’s expression shutters off—not in a defensive way, more like he’s being careful. “Nope. I fell down a flight of stairs. I’ve also been told that I’m clumsy.”

            “Hardly the worst name you’ve been called, I imagine.”

            “Oh, hardly. This—” He makes a vague gesture that seems to encompass all of the damage done to his body, both seen and unseen “—this was probably deserved, though.”

            “Was it?” That, Andrew admits, he does not like to hear. He’s not the kind of person to say that no one deserves to be seriously hurt, but he’d be surprised if Neil was the kind of person who deserved to be tortured at the hands of Riko. And Andrew—Andrew knows all too well the sickening emptiness of meaningless pain you think is deserved.

            “That,” Neil says, “is what I’ve been told.”

            There’s a long silence. Neil holds eye contact with Andrew over the rim of his water glass. After a deliberate moment, he adds, “Sometimes, when you’re sneaking around in other teams’ locker rooms, you encounter a set of stairs because you’re not being careful enough. And then you fall down them.” He takes another sip of water. Andrew blinks slowly. “Understand?”

            “I do,” Andrew says. And he does: he understands that there are no stairs in the Foxes’ locker room. And he understands that Riko is far too careful to let one of his Ravens out of his sight and not notice, and far too sadistic to let it go unpunished. “I would imagine this flight of stairs would have something to do with why you did not play at the last Ravens game.”

            Neil grins crookedly without any real humor. “You wouldn’t be wrong. Like I said, very clumsy.”

            “Almost as clumsy as you are reckless.”

            “Almost.” Neil sets his water down on the bar and presses the hand that had been carrying the cold glass against his bruised eye lightly. “How’s our friend?”

            “We do not have any mutual friends,” Andrew says instantly.

            Neil rolls his visible eye. “Just answer the question, Minyard, I don’t care if you two are friends or not.”

            “He plans to fight,” Andrew says after a moment. “We will see how long that lasts.”

            Neil lets out a quiet snort. “Yeah.”

            “Having fun, Neil?”

            Andrew would recognize that silky-smooth voice anywhere. He would also fight its owner, literally anywhere.

            “Yeah, Riko, loads of fun, without you,” Neil says without even turning around. He’s just broken about five rules of the Nest with about three seconds, and from the way he flinches away from Riko the second he’s finished speaking, he knows it and expects violence to follow out of habit. But Riko wouldn’t do something like that in public. He likes to save the bleeding for behind closed doors so thick no one will hear his victims screaming.

            “Oh, Neil,” Riko says. “That’s no way to talk to your King, is it?” He reaches out and takes Neil’s wrist; it may look like a playful tug back to the fold, but Andrew is close enough that he can see his fingers turning white against Neil’s skin. Another set of bruises to add to Neil’s collection, then.

            Neil looks from his wrist, to the threat in Riko’s eyes, to the glass of water still sitting on the bar, and says, “No.”

            Then Andrew sees exactly Riko’s holding him: one wrong move, and Riko will be able to snap Neil’s wrist. The threat is obvious: stay in line or end up a cripple like Kevin. So when Riko tugs again, Neil follows without a backwards glance to Andrew.

            But though Riko may not be able to see it, there’s an answering threat in the way Neil walks away quietly: you can keep me in line for now, but one day you’ll lose me like Kevin.

***

            Andrew makes a decision that night: Neil Josten is dangerous. Not because he’s going to turn on Kevin, but because he’s been broken. Broken people are dangerous. They have nothing left to lose.

            Andrew would know that, wouldn’t he?

            Broken people also have death wishes. And Andrew is done with those.

***

            Columbia is loud and glittering at night if you know the right places, and the monsters definitely do. Even with the brisk winter chill in the air, there are girls trotting from club to club in body-con dress and heels you could kill a man with. Andrew has never had eyes for them—though he lingers for a fraction of a second on a girl with an holographic pink and purple purse and resolves to try and find it for Renee somewhere—but he has a grudging respect for their determination to defy the weather.

            It’s late in the night but only the beginning of winter break, and this combination of things has resolved into a majority of the monsters being drunk out of their minds. A _majority_ means _everyone but Andrew_ , because someone has to drive home, and more importantly, Andrew would rather slit his wrists rather than leave his family open to attack because he’s too drunk to walk straight. Like Kevin is right now.

            That’s a good indication that their night is coming to a close, especially because Kevin is also leaning his elbow on Aaron’s shoulder, and though Aaron may also be wasted beyond belief, he’s looking incredibly resentful of that. Kevin’s also muttering about how the Ravens are playing tonight into the clear night air, though thankfully Nicky’s loud rambling about Eric drowns that out. They don’t need to attract the press, doubtful as it is that anyone is listening.

            Andrew considers the three of them for a moment, his veins still buzzing from the cracker dust and alcohol he’d had earlier in the night. Then he turns away and walks up to the girl with the holographic purse, leaving them a few yards away by the car.

            “Hey.”

            She turns around, towering above him in her sky-high heels. He tilts his chin up and meets her gaze impassively.

            “I know someone who would like your purse. Could I take a picture of it for her.” His voice is purposefully toneless, which probably doesn’t alleviate the strangeness of the request, but he’s never been concerned about people liking him.

            She’s gives him a considering look. “Is this a dare or something?” She’s not accusatory, just curious. 

            Andrew looks back for a moment, and then, glancing back at the monsters to make sure they haven’t wandered off—Nicky is starting up a German drinking song, and trying to get Aaron to join in—pulls his phone out of his pocket and flicks through his pictures until he finds one of Renee. He shows it to the girl. “It is for her.”

            “Oh.” She looks at Renee for a moment, and then nods. “Yeah, sure, you can take a picture of it. She’s cute. Are you guys dating?”

            “No.” Andrew lines up his shot of the purse and snaps the picture. Hopefully, if he shows it to Renee, she’ll be able to find it later. His eidetic memory would help him recognize it, but he doubts that any description he could offer Renee would help her much. What he doesn’t say is _I’m gay and so is Renee_. The chances of them dating, no matter what the rest of the Foxes may think, are lower than zero.

            “Oh,” the girl says again. “Sorry for assuming. I—uh, I hope she likes the purse.”

            Andrew nods and turns to leave. Time to take the monsters back to their Columbia house. It’s going to be a long ride if Nicky keeps up that singing.

            “The Ravens are playing,” Kevin mumbles as they all collapse into the car.

            “Shut up.”

            “I need to—I need to watch them. We’re—we’re . . . We’re never going to beat them if . . . if we don’t watch.”

            “Shut up,” Andrew repeats, jamming the keys into the ignition and pulling out a cigarette to chase away the thoughts that threaten to wonder whether Neil will be playing tonight.

            “Andrew. ‘Drew. Promise we’re gonna watch the Ravens.”

            “Shut _up_ ,” Aaron snarls, kicking the back of Kevin’s seat with surprising vigor. Andrew exhales smoke and pulls out of the parking lot with the reflection that he and Aaron are not so different after all.

            Everyone is a bit more comprehensible when they get back to the house, which in Kevin’s case does not mean _less stubborn_ , but because the moment he gets inside, he parks himself in front of the TV and turns it on.

            “Kevin.”

            “I’m watching the game,” Kevin says. “I need to. Andrew, I need to. If Riko does something—I need to know.”

            Andrew isn’t a fan of this idea, but he can’t really argue the fact that they shouldn’t let Riko be one step ahead of them, so he goes to the kitchen, gets a pint of Haagen-Daz Caramel Cone ice cream, and sits down next to Kevin with a spoon and a scowl.

            “That’s bad for—”

            “You drank more than an entire bottle of vodka tonight, Kevin,” Andrew says without any inflection or accusation whatsoever. Kevin instantly falls silent. “Turn the TV on.”

            Kevin switches on the TV after some half-drunken fumbling with the remote. Because it’s so damn late, the game has just ended, a fact that pleases Andrew to no end.

            “The Ravens have won another easy victory tonight,” the announcer is saying, “once again affirming their spot as the favorites for this seasons championships. We’ll be joining them in the press hall in a few minutes to learn more about their strategy for this season, their new lineup after the loss of one of their stars, and their post-graduation plans. Stay tuned.”

            The channel cuts to commercials. Andrew digs a chunk of chocolate out of his ice cream and pops it into his mouth, crunching loudly enough to bother Kevin.

            “Andrew—”

            Andrew flips him off with his non-spoon-holding hand and digs out another chunk. There’s a long silence, and then Kevin says, “What do you think they’re going to say?”

            “Whatever Riko tells them to.”

            “And Neil?”

            Andrew licks ice cream off his spoon and watches the TV tout the benefits of AT&T data plans. “Whatever he wants.”

            “Riko won’t let him act out for much longer. And—” Kevin falls abruptly silent. Andrew sends him a considering look.

            “I expect Josten knows that.”

            Kevin knows that too. Whatever Neil’s game is, Andrew doubts that it ends with Neil alive. Creatures made of defiance and death wishes and the desire to run rarely get happy endings.

            The TV switches back to coverage of the game before Kevin can reply. The Ravens are settling into perfect formation at the press table, every face impassive. Neil has stitches on his jawline, and Andrew ruminates that he has a talent for trouble unlike anything Andrew has seen before.

            The questions start and Riko takes the reins as always, expertly navigating the sea of reporters to pick out questions that will allow him to show the press the polished face they love. No one’s ever seen the side that Kevin’s seen: broken teeth, blood splatters, bone splinters. No one’s ever caught Riko losing control, and that is, maybe, the biggest difference between him and Andrew.

            _No_.

            Andrew may be a monster, but he’s the product of other monsters. There is no softness left in him because people have taken it from him. He is broken glass because someone has smashed him, and his unwavering control is because he will never let anyone do it again. Riko has had everything given to him, and he still chooses to light others on fire to warm his hands.

            Andrew is many things, but the moment he begins to believe he is like Riko is the day he sees himself out of this world as effectively as he can.

            Riko calls on a reporter with the kind of amused disdain that his fans will endlessly gif on Tumblr tomorrow—cruelty with a velvet coat is inexplicably appealing to some people.

            “My question is about the Palmetto Foxes,” the reporter says. Riko’s face goes entirely smooth in a way that means he’s planned for this question and is calculating the maximum amount of damage he can do. Off camera, Neil stirs, a motion recorded only by the twitch of his sleeve seen in the shot. “Your teammate—your brother—left your team for them last season. I know this has been talked about a lot, and you’re probably sick of questions about this, but—how do you feel about the Foxes? Do you think they’re worthy of a player like Kevin?”  

            Riko opens his mouth, and Andrew prepares for him to rip apart every shred of self-confidence Kevin has built up, and Kevin hunches forward, eyes glued to the screen, and, and, and—

            “Hi, yeah, excuse me?” a familiar voice says, too loud and too reckless. “I have something I’d like to say in response to that.”

            Andrew isn’t much one for gratitude, but—

            Neil Josten is a dues ex machina unto himself. His mouth is a force of nature.

            “By all means, Neil,” the reporter says, because the press loves a good show and if there’s one thing Neil is good at one, it’s providing a story.

            “Neil,” Riko says, his face no longer quite so smooth.

            “In a minute, Riko, I’m talking to the press,” Neil says, and the quickest grin ever captured on television flits across his face, tragic and sharp and full of the reckless enjoyment a person gets from signing their own death warrant. Andrew knows that grin because he wore it for years. “I’ve only spoken to a few of the Foxes, and only very briefly at that, but I think they’re an excellent team. They’re playing a team that has the fewest players in the league, they’re the only team with a female captain—and she does a great job, and I think she’s brilliant, but they get endless shit for it—and they’re taking a risk by taking on a player that’s suffered a tremendous injury relatively recently. But what they lack in unity and organization, they make up for in raw talent and grit.” He tilts his chin up and meets the camera’s gaze with ice-blue eyes. “More importantly, I think that they have a great team camaraderie. It’s not about the glorification of one player, it’s not about who scores the most points, it’s not about trying to prove yourself against your teammates. They’re deeply disadvantaged, but that’s taught them to support each other where they can, and that makes them a force to reckoned with. I’ve only played them once, you know? But I have to say I was blown away by them. They were fighters. They knew they were going to lose, they even expected to lose, but they stood up and fought anyway, because they didn’t know another way to lose, and all I can say is that one day, that attitude is going to mean that they don’t lose. And I expect that day will come sooner than we expect.”

            Beside Andrew, Kevin lets out a long, slow breath. Andrew hardly smiles these days, but if he did, he’d been grinning. As it is, he just allows himself a moment of deep, deep satisfaction. A force of nature indeed. This is no off-the-cuff roast that Neil indulged in because he couldn’t help himself. This is calculated rebellion, every word a dagger mean to cut down the criticism Riko is preparing to unleash against Kevin. He’s bringing the fight to Riko for them. He won’t let Kevin back out or sit down. He’s going to force everyone’s hands right the fuck now.

            “I think that if they pull their act together, they could really go far. And I have the feeling that’s what they’re aiming to do this season. Like I already said, I really respect their captain—Wilds—she’s brilliant, and she does a really good job of bringing them all together on the field during a game. There’s a backliner, Matt Boyd, I think, that really shows some potential. He’s got a really powerful side pass that I’d love to have on our team. And obviously, Kevin is more than a player, he’s an artist.” Kevin’s breath catches, and for a moment, it seems like Neil is looking right through the TV to meet Kevin’s gaze. “He’s down a phenomenal job of recovering from his injury, and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that he’s with a team that has so much grit. His injury took a lot out of him, but the player that’s emerged is a force to be reckoned with. He’s worth so much more than what happened to him, and frankly I don’t appreciate when people talk about Kevin _before_ and Kevin _after_. His story as a player did not begin and end with that hand. Quite honestly, I wish we’d stop assigning worth based on injuries in collegiate sports, and Exy in particular, because it’s such a dangerous sport, and injuries don’t define your worth as player. Plenty players have suffered—significant injuries and still been able to play afterwards.” His hand touches his shoulder, ever so briefly. “You just need to love the sport enough.” He pauses, seeming to realize he’s getting off track. “Oh—the Foxes also have that amazing goalkeeper. Minyard.”

            Andrew’s spoon stops halfway to his mouth. Kevin flicks him a glance, and Andrew packs as much disdain as he can in his responding glare.

            Neil grins at the camera now, a hair less sharp than it had been before. “I’d love to play him again. Getting past him when he has a mind to shut you out is fucking near impossible. I can’t wait to see what’s in store for him, because I haven’t seen that kind of raw talent in anyone for a really long time, and that’s including my time with Ravens.” He sits back in his chair, that grin still lingering on his face. “Anyway. To answer your questions, I totally think that the Foxes are worthy of Kevin. I miss having him on the team, but he’s in a place that fits his talents and his attitude better, now.”

            The camera just barely catches Jean’s face leaning in to whisper into Neil’s ear, hand clamped around his wrist frantically, before panning to Riko, who says something cool and unkind and contemptuous about the Foxes, his lips tight with rage. But no one—Kevin included—is listening. The big story tomorrow will be Neil. It will be about the Foxes’ grit and Kevin’s potential. It will be about Andrew’s talent.

            The press conference doesn’t last much longer after that, mainly because the press has already gotten their big story, and it’s late, and everyone is eager to go home. But when the Ravens turn to walk out, a minute before the channel cuts back to commercials, the camera catches Riko’s hand pressing down on the back of Neil’s neck, and his other hand grabbing his chin and forcing those ice blue eyes to meet his eyes, and Neil is wearing that skeleton grin again, terrified and elated at the prospect of destruction he’s brought on himself, and—

            AT&T data plans are really something. Unlimited Plus sounds like a good deal.

            Kevin makes a muffled, pained noise, and then—

            “He’s going to kill him he’s going to kill him he’s going to kill him he’s going to kill him—”

            “Give me your phone.”

            Kevin falls abruptly silent, and stars at Andrew blankly.

            “Your phone,” Andrew repeats. He’s standing up, but he doesn’t remember doing it.

            “He’s going to—”

            “You already told me. _Your phone_.”

            “Andrew—”

            “ _Kevin_.” Andrew doesn’t have to shout. He never does.

            Kevin hands over his phone.

            “I will be back in a few hours. Go to bed. Use Aaron’s phone to call me if something goes wrong.” When Kevin doesn’t respond, Andrew pauses on his way to the door. “Answer me so I know you understand.”

            “I understand,” Kevin says. “Where are you going?”

            “I have a bone that needs picking,” Andrew says simply, and locks the door behind him when he goes.

            Andrew refuses to live in debt to anyone, and if Neil Josten dies tonight, Andrew will never be able to pay him back for Kevin’s backbone.

***

            The morning is steadily bleeding from black into grey by the time Andrew arrives at Evermore. He’s more tired that he’d like, but a stop for a Frappuccino at a Starbucks drive through half an hour ago had ensure that he has enough caffeine and, more importantly, sugar in his system to be alert. It’s been several long hours since he’d left Columbia and there have still been no calls from the rest of the monsters, which means that they’re probably either fine or dead. He’s guessing fine. Their hangovers are bad enough that they’re probably still sleeping, and it’s unlikely that Riko could get permission to kill Kevin at this point in the game.

            If he’s being honest with himself—and there’s nothing he hates like a liar—he’s not entirely sure why he’s taking this risk for a mouthy martyr like Neil. Maybe because Kevin hasn’t been entirely forthcoming about who Neil really is, and Andrew has always loved a good riddle. Maybe because Neil is far too aware of what he is to everyone who has ever touched him—flesh that can scream and bleed—and still can’t help but fight everyone’s battles. Maybe because Neil said that he can’t wait to see what the future holds for Andrew, and Andrew has never seen his future at all. They’ve barely even spoken to each other, but Neil sees something there that Andrew can’t. Maybe Andrew wants to know what it is.

            He parks the car behind a diner two blocks from the Nest and pulls Kevin’s phone out of his pocket. After a few minutes of scrolling through his contacts, Andrew finds what he’d suspected he would: a Virginia area code under the dispassionate contact name _04_. He’d known that the Ravens are required to keep personal cell phones and have them charged and handy at all times so that the Master could track or contact them as necessary, and it’s hardly surprising that Kevin would have some of the numbers, with his elite status as 02.

            Andrew selects Neil’s contact and hits _send new message_. He hesitates for a moment over the keyboard, brow furrowed, before typing out: _Behind Georgio’s in ten minutes. I won’t wait._ It’s harsh but Andrew doesn’t owe Neil his life—he has responsibilities back in Columbia, and if Neil can’t make it, he’s not storming the Nest for him.

            He’s barely set the phone down when it pings—and who doesn’t have their phone on mute, anyway? When he opens it, Neil has already sent a reply: _It takes eleven minutes to get to Georgio’s. More with a broken leg. Better wait for me, Day._

            Andrew stares down at the text for a long moment, and then sets the phone down again. At least the idiot’s alive.

            Nine minutes and twenty nine seconds later, someone raps sharply on the passenger side window. When Andrew turns his head, there’s a smear of blood on the glass, and Neil Josten is standing on the other side of it.

            Half his face—the half that’s unmarred by Riko’s tattoo—is swollen and bloody, and there’s dried blood under his nose. The stitches at his jaw have been ripped open, and his loose black hoodie is doing little to disguise the fact that he’s holding himself awkwardly, undoubtedly to minimize the pain of the injuries the hoodie covers. He looks like he’s been through hell and back, but his expression more considering than pained, and Andrew can’t tell if it’s him that Neil’s wary of, or whether wariness is just the perpetual state of being that a creature of prey like Neil is in.

            Andrew rolls down the passenger side window and offers Neil his most bored stare.

            “Why’d you come?” Neil’s voice hovers between bleak and suspicious.

            “It took you under ten minutes,” Andrew says instead of responding.

            “I don’t actually have a broken leg,” Neil shoots back. “Where’s Kevin?”

            Andrew considers this for a moment, and then reaches over and opens the car door. “Get in.”

            Neil looks at him. “I don’t know if I trust you, Minyard.”

            “Not my problem.”

            When Neil doesn’t move, Andrew lets out a barely audible sigh. “What exactly do you have to lose, Josten? What can I do to you that Riko is not already doing to you?”

            Neil blinks, and then smiles tiredly. “Running is always what I’ve done best, anyway.” He gets into the car—stiffly and painfully, but with the sure swiftness of an athlete—and shuts the door after him. “Let’s go.”

            Andrew begins backing out of his parking space. “There is a First Aid kit in the glove box. Do not bleed on the seats.”

            “It’s a nice car,” Neil mumbles, already opening the glove box and examining the contents of the kit. “If you have a fifth of whiskey, a needle, and some dental floss, that’d be helpful, too.”

            Andrew gives him a half-incredulous, half-disdainful look, which Neil meets with vague surprise. “No? Okay. I’m not gonna tell you have to live your life, but you might want to stock up on those things.”

            By the time they’re back on the highway, Neil has cleaned up as best as he can and is already asleep, slumped against the car door with his body angled away from Andrew. There are still far too many questions to answered, but for now—well, Andrew is content to let them lie.

They drive back to Palmetto in silence, in blood, in fearful, fearful hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, i hope you enjoyed that chapter comprised entirely of everyone doing The Most. i would also like to say that Haagen Daz Caramel Cone ice cream is God's gift to this miserable earth and if you've never had it, you need to stop reading this and go buy some RIGHT NOW people i am not kidding. 
> 
> also, i totally made up the term "side pass" because i was too lazy to google actual Exy terms and i thought it sounded sporty, and then today i went and reread part of atfg and guess what!!! side passes are actually a thing. i'm a #confirmed psychic. 
> 
> thank you so much for reading the second chapter of this hot mess! You can spread the word about it by reblogging [this tumblr post](https://iaquilam.tumblr.com/post/157424424070/better-than-a-grave-or-a-hearse-by-iaquilam-what) , or by following me on tumblr [here](https://iaquilam.tumblr.com/). and if you're still reading after that shameless self promo, thank you. see yall in two weeks!


	3. Hunger is the Purest Sin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello friends!!! i have a few things to share before we get to the chapter, so i'll make them quick: first off, you may have noticed that ao3 shows that the number of total chapters this fic will have is now six. I encountered a plot hole in my outline, and then when i tried to take it out/compensate for it without adding new material, it totally rushed things so i just decided to add in another chapter to make everything flow nicely. and then i also decided to have a short epilogue which will be published at the same time as the last chapter so wrap things up. so basically all you need to know is that y'all are getting more content than planned!
> 
> next, this chapter contains a brief, nongraphic, but pretty candid discussion of past sexual assault, an attempt of nonconsensual drugging, and a brief mention of past nonconsensual drugging. it's definitely nothing worse or even as bad as anything in the books, so i don't think anyone should have a problem, but i just wanted to give everyone a heads up!
> 
> and finally, there are a few lines in here that come from the actual books, so obviously those are not mine, and belong to Nora. the chapter title comes from the song "white foxes" from Susanne Sundfor, which is a super cool, creepy, awesome song that has total Andreil vibes (and not just because it has "foxes" in the title, although that helps.)

            The sun is setting outside the window Andrew is smoking out of, painting the sky the exact same shade of red Kevin’s face had turned upon seeing Neil step—stagger—crawl out of Andrew’s car.

            “Good to see you, too, Kevin,” Neil had said, and then had grabbed onto Andrew’s wing mirror and gritted his teeth while his vision briefly but obviously blacked out.

            Kevin had turned a helpless gaze onto Andrew for an explanation; Andrew allowed one side of his mouth to rise a quarter of an inch higher than the other and hurled Kevin’s phone in the general vicinity of his face in a moment of greater satisfaction than he has felt in a long time.

            “You’re welcome,” he’d said, and gone inside without a backwards glance. Kevin, and by extension Neil, had followed.

            Several hours have passed since then, and Kevin and Neil have been in Wymack’s office for nearly as long. Andrew has gone through most of a pack of cigarettes waiting for them, spending the moments he’s not smoking trying to catch a few words of the conversation going on inside. It’s not that he particularly cares if Wymack sends Neil back to the Nest, but he does hate to be out of the loop, and missing out on this conversation will put him at a considerable disadvantage. Sadly, the three men have been keeping their voices down, and so he hasn’t gleaned much useful information; the only truly noteworthy thing he’s heard so far is the fact that Kevin seems to be pretending that getting Neil from the Nest was his own idea instead of Andrew’s. This was first simply amusing to Andrew—typical Kevin, always wanting to be in the spotlight—but then he had to grudgingly give Kevin credit: Wymack is more likely to trust Kevin’s judgment than Andrew’s, and Neil is less likely to be suspicious of Kevin’s intentions.

            Andrew exhales a stream of smoke into the purpling air and watches the sun slip over the horizon, his insides as cool and empty as the space between the windowsill and the sky. Strangely, here, alone and smoking in the silence, he feels as close to the peace he absorbs in Bee’s office; there’s none of the restlessness he’d felt last night, watching the post-game press with Kevin, making the snap decision to drive to Evermore, driving the long hours alone in the brightening early morning. Maybe because the ball is now in Riko’s court again—no pun intended, although Andrew does allow himself a brief moment of amusement anyway—and all they have to do now is wait.

            Which is what he’s been doing for hours now. But he’s good at waiting. Always has been. Timing, after all, is everything, especially if you want to get away with your crimes.

            The door to Wymack’s office opens, and Kevin pokes his head out.

            “Andrew,” he says. “Coach wants to see you.”

            “How nice of him,” Andrew drawls, stubbing out his cigarette butt on the windowsill and slamming the glass pane shut. He turns to meet Kevin’s disapproving gaze. “What is it?”

            “How many of those did you smoke?”

            “We’re in the shit now, and you still care about my smoking habit? Your self-righteousness at a time like this is admirable.” When Kevin’s expression doesn’t change, he adds, “We’ll all probably be dead before I can contract cancer, so lighten up, Day.”

            “And whose fault is that?” Kevin asks in a lower tone, glancing over his shoulder.

            “Not mine,” Andrew says. “My job is to keep you safe and sane. I did what I had to. Be grateful. Unless you really do want to send him back. Maybe Riko will do me a favor and finally take him out. He’d be less of a problem that way.”

            “Don’t,” Kevin says, his voice agonized. “Don’t say that. Just—don’t.”

            Andrew tilts his head to one side, considering his reaction, and settling on the possible explanation that Kevin is feeling guilty about Neil. His injuries, his existence, whatever. It’s a waste of time, is what it is. Andrew doesn’t believe in wasting his very limited emotional resources on something as useless as _guilt_ , but Kevin seems to be riddled with it.

            “Let’s get this over with, then,” is all he says, and they step back into Wymack’s office shoulder to shoulder.

            Andrew takes in the scene—Wymack, sitting wearily on the edge of his desk; Neil, tense, bandaged, and poised to run in a corner that affords him the most distance from Wymack—and then migrates towards the window to crack it open and take out his cigarettes again.

            “Minyard,” Wymack says with exaggerated patience, “would you mind pretending you have an ounce of respect for either me or for the sport you play, and put those the fuck away?”

            Andrew makes eye contact with him and holds it for an uncomfortably long time while putting the pack back in his pocket. Wymack sighs.

            “Thank you. Let’s get down to business. Why the hell did you think it was a good idea to go get Neil? I thought you were in the business of keeping Ravens the fuck away from Kevin, not bringing them to his doorstep, even if he did ask you to do it.”

            “I,” Andrew says boredly, “am also in the business of keeping Kevin’s brain in one piece. A man can’t play if he’s having a mental breakdown, Coach. You should have seen him after they aired that tape of our little fledgling running his mouth. I deemed that Josten wasn’t a threat, and that Kevin would not function without knowing he was safe. So,” he glances at Kevin, who’s staring stonily at the ceiling, “I did what he asked. Does that satisfy you, Coach?”

            “ _Not really_ ,” Wymack says explosively. Out of the corner of his eye, Andrew sees Neil flinch at the loudness of his voice before forcing himself to stand straight. He nearly—nearly—laughs: Neil is such a broken creature, made up of the memory of pain and the all-consuming fear of being hurt again, as most broken creatures are. But he’s also desperate to be something else: the knowledge that he has nothing to lose, the self-conscious desire for something to lose. He’s contradictory, infuriating, fascinating.

            Andrew always did like keeping his puzzles close. And it’s been a long time since anything broke the chronic boredom that has settled into his very bones.

            “Can’t help you with that, Coach,” Andrew says after a moment. “That’s the only explanation I have for you.”

            Wymack swears and turns back to Kevin with a beseeching expression on his face. Kevin begins a long, mostly practical explanation of why they should keep Neil, and because Andrew doesn’t care about anything Kevin has to say on this subject, he turns his full attention to the man of the hour himself.

            Neil looks mostly uncomfortable with a hint of that ever-present wariness; to Andrew’s amusement, he too seems only partially focused on the conversation going on, constantly fiddling with his phone and frowning. Andrew makes a mental note to acquire him a new phone without a tracker—that is, if they decide to let him stay. If they send him back, Andrew doubts the striker will have need of any phone at all. When he looks up, his eyes meet Andrews. Neither of them look away for a long, long moment, and then Kevin says, “MAYBE BECAUSE I’M THE SECOND BEST EXY PLAYER IN THE LEAGUE,” very loudly, and then moment is broken.

            Andrew wonders how on earth Kevin is using that fact to justify bringing Neil to the Foxes.

            “The best,” Neil says, very quietly.

            Everyone turns to face him. Andrew raises an eyebrow.

            “I’m sorry?” Wymack says, looking frazzled.

            “The best Exy player in the league,” Neil says, a little louder. “Kevin’s the best Exy player in the league. Not the second best.”

            There’s a very long silence. Kevin looks stunned. Wymack looks impressed. If Andrew had ever felt a damn thing, he would be positively gleeful right now. Neil had just proved his to Wymack in three short sentences, and by the looks of it, he doesn’t even know it.

            “All right,” Wymack says slowly. “I like the way you think, kid. That’s quite a statement coming from a Raven.”

            Neil tilts his chin up. “Well, I never wanted to be a Raven. You don’t have to keep me here long. If you give me a phone without a tracker, I have some contacts that I can call; they should be able to collect me within a few weeks at most.”

            Interesting. If he has people who can get him away from the Moriyamas, how had he gotten forced into the Ravens in the first place? Andrew had known Kevin hadn’t been telling him the entire truth about Neil’s backstory when they’d first talked about him, but he hadn’t suspected this particular layer of intrigue.

            “Also,” Neil says, “Kevin, I want you to contact Jeremy Knox. Tell him he’s going to get a Raven transfer within a few days and that he should give him a tryout and a fair chance. I know they have a backliner position open.”

            “Jean—?”

            “Jean,” Neil confirms. ”I made a deal with him: if I got out of the Nest, I’d get him out too. I won’t have him suffering for my escape. We thought this through a long time ago.” The implied accusation is _unlike you,_ but he’s kind enough not to say it. “So make that call and make sure Jean will have a chance at that Trojan backliner spot. I’ll deal with getting him out of the Nest.”

            “How did you manage that, anyway?” Wymack says curiously.

            “There’s more than one way of getting what you want,” Neil says with a slight smile that just barely borders on smug. “Like I said, we thought this through.”

            “I’ll make the call,” Kevin says. To his credit, he hardly even sounds faint.

            Andrew clears his throat. “So Jean Moreau gets a spot on the other side of the country with one of the top teams in the league, and you get—?”

            Neil meets his gaze from across the room unwaveringly. “To keep living. Until I don’t.”

            And that, very simply, sums it up. After what Neil has done to get Jean out, to make Kevin fight back, to force Riko to back off, there’s no way he can continue to live in the public eye playing Exy. There’s no way he can continue to live for very much longer at all; if his connections are good, he may get a few more years before the Moriyamas catch up with him, but the hard truth of it is that Neil’s life has an expiration date.

            Underneath his tightly composed face, Neil is wearing that brief, sharp, tragic smile.

***

            “I am your _hugest fan_ ,” is the first thing Matt says to Neil when he walks into his dorm room. “That roast you dished out to the journalist when they asked about Andrew’s meds? Iconic. It is forever seared into my memory as the clearest example of perfection I can recall in my fleeting years on earth. Do you want a Pringle? I’m not gonna be able to finish this tube.”

            Neil stares at Matt like he’s an alien species for all of five seconds and then recovers himself. “N—no, I’m fine, thanks.”       

            “Okay, well, it’s great to have you with us, man. Lemme know if you need anything.”

            Dan, who is sitting on the armrest of Matt’s chair scrolling through her Instagram feed, looks up and assesses Neil with the brief frankness of someone calculating a threat. “Hey. Heard you’ll be here for a few weeks?”

            Neil nods, once, briefly.

            “I’ll have my eye on you,” she says, equal parts sincere and teasing, before going back to double tapping her way through pictures of avocadoes and sunsets.

            The Foxes don’t generally spend much time together as a team, but Neil’s arrival has coincided—or perhaps inspired—one of their rare group meetings where everyone agrees to peacefully coexist if not interact.

            “That was Matt and Dan,” Kevin says. His bored, impatient attitude has recovered itself from the shock of seeing a battered Neil turn up on his doorstep, and he’s back to treating the other Foxes with faint scorn and indifference—a fact that Andrew predicts will not exactly help Neil’s popularity among the Foxes. “You’ve already met Nicky, of course.”       

            Nicky raises his glass in Neil’s direction from across the room and shouts, “THAT SWEATER LOOKS NICE ON YOU” much louder than strictly necessary.

            Neil looks down at his ratty sweater and then back up at Kevin, slightly annoyed. “I know who everyone is,” he says. “I’ve watched your games.”

            “Well, you haven’t properly met them yet,” Kevin says, undeterred, and continues guiding Neil through the room. “That’s Seth—” Seth grunts in Neil’s general direction without looking at him “—that’s Aaron—” they don’t acknowledge each other, to Andrew’s infinite amusement “—that’s Allison—” Allison gives him a sunshiney, threatening smile; Neil looks at her much as he’d looked at Matt “—and that’s Renee.”

            Renee waves at Neil and walks over to where he, Kevin, and Andrew are standing. “It’s nice to meet you, Neil. I’ve heard quite a bit about you.”

            “Have you?”

            “Good things only, I promise. It’s delightful to have you here.” She holds out a hand; Neil makes as if to shake it, but instead she clasps his hand in both of hers and adds, “How has Andrew been treating you?”

            It’s an interesting question, fitting of one of the only people who have ever piqued Andrew’s interest. She’s not so much asking Neil about himself as she is checking with Andrew to make sure he’s behaving himself. But whatever resentment Andrew might have held against her for trying to check on him is lessened by the fact that he knows she’s letting Neil know that Andrew, and not Kevin, is the one in charge here.

            “It’s been an interesting stay so far,” Neil says, which doesn’t really answer the question. He’s wearing a mild mask that effectively hides anything he might be really thinking. Renee exchanges a look with Andrew so fleetingly that Andrew’s not sure Neil catches it, and then says, “Well, I’m glad you’re here. It’s always nice to see some new faces around here.”

            Neil looks as though he doubts that very much, but he just nods.

            “Well, that was the whole cult,” Andrew says boredly. “You are now one of the initiated.”

            Neil sends him a startled glance before seeming to realize that he’s joking. The interesting thing is, though, that it doesn’t seem to be far off: the upperclassmen, especially Matt, treat him like one of their own, almost as if he _has_ been initiated. The monsters, being monsters, are a little more standoffish—except for Kevin, who hovers behind Neil wherever he goes, like he’s afraid Neil will make a run for it. Neil seems hyperaware of this, but doesn’t say anything, instead just getting more and more skittish until Matt ushers him away from Kevin and places himself between the two like a bodyguard.

            It’s interesting to observe, to say the least.

            Andrew feels like he may be overusing the word _interesting_ when it comes to describing Neil Josten.

            “So are you going to be signing with the team, then?” Matt asks, a little eagerly. Dan smiles into her cup. “You should at least consider it—it wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, considering that you’ve said good shit about us. We’d love to have you, dude.”

            Neil sputters a little on the water Renee had handed him. “ _No_ —uh, no. Like Dan said, it’s just for a few weeks. Riko wouldn’t—I’m taking some time off Exy. The Ravens have are a tough team to play for—obviously—and switching would be hard on my reputation as a player, especially because I don’t have Kevin’s star power.” It’s an impressively positive spin on the realization that Andrew had in Wymack’s office: that by leaving the Nest, Neil had declared his days of Exy over and his days of living numbered.

            “Kevin’s not even that cool,” Matt grumbles, but seems to sense that this is a touchy point, and drops it.

            A few hours later into the night finds Andrew standing outside smoking; the babble of the other Foxes is behind him, and the cool darkness of the evening ahead. The familiar inhale-exhale and the smell of the smoke is as part of the night as the stars, for him—nighttime means smoking until he can breathe again, means sitting along on the rooftop when it’s so dark he can’t see where the roof ends and the sky begins, means _feeling something_ —   

            He wouldn’t object to being on the rooftop right now. The danger of their situation is all too clear and present—Kevin deciding to fight Riko one Exy game at a time, Neil forfeiting his life with the Ravens for a life on the run—and who knows, it might be better to feel Kevin’s terror to the bone for once rather than this indifferent numbness. He’s put himself in a prime position to be taken out and he couldn’t care less.

            Even since last Easter, Andrew’s been getting increasingly bored with existence as a concept. Logically, he knows that he can’t really give up on life just yet, because he has Aaron and Nicky and Kevin to watch out for, but the idea of simply breathing is so overwhelming mind-numbing that some mornings he wants to forgo sitting up in favor of staring at the ceiling for the next three hundred years. Kevin has given him insurance on Andrew’s future self, but—some mornings that doesn’t feel like enough. Sometimes the vast boredom of his existence seems so temptingly easy to end that he’s willing to punctuate it with literally anything: fear, smoke, Exy, fighting. Anything to try and make the endless grey days an increment less mechanized.

            “Can I have one?”

            Andrew turns and tilts his head back just enough to convey his slight disdain. “I thought Ravens didn’t smoke.”

            Neil Josten steps through the door and comes to stand next to Andrew, an act that nearly everyone who has spent more than a second in Andrew’s presence assumes will get them killed. “I don’t.” And then the little shit holds out his hand for a cigarette.

            Andrew looks Neil, then at his hand, then back up at Neil, and then pulls out his pack and offers it to him along with his lighter. Neil mumbles his thanks and lights up. After a moment, Andrew looks back at him and realizes that he is, in fact, not smoking—he’s just cupping the cigarette in his hands and breathing in every occasional wisp of smoke that wafts up to him. It’s an appalling waste of good nicotine.

            “You get it, don’t you,” Neil says without really making it seem like a question.

            Andrew doesn’t respond, just shoots him a sideways glance.

            “You get that I’m going to die soon”: Without much inflection, more of a statement of fact than a reaction to one.

            Andrew watches his smoke drift into the night air and mingle with Neil’s before dissipating. “I am sure you still have one or two more years left for you.”

            “Yeah, maybe.”

            “It would be baffling to most people why a Raven-trained rising Exy star would be willing to stab his King in the back for a life on the run that will soon be cut short.”

            “Kevin,” Neil says. When Andrew slants him another blank look, he elaborates, “Kevin and Jean. We can’t all make it out of the Nest alive. They’ve been playing for longer, and they’re better known. It’d be easier for them to make it, so that’s the call I made.”

            “I doubt that is the only, or even the main reason why you decided to be the martyr,” Andrew says boredly, “and I doubt you are going to tell me.”

            Neil shoots him an amused half-smile. “If we’re both still alive twenty years from now, I’ll tell you.”

            “So, you won’t.”        

            “No, I won’t.”

            “Well,” Andrew says, “I’ve heard there’s more than one way of getting what you want.”

            “Yeah, and driving to Evermore to pick up your teammate’s half-dead friend at the risk of your own life is rarely one of them,” Neil says. “Thanks for the cigarette; it’s getting cold.” He throws his cigarette down and grinds it out.

            When the door shuts quietly behind him, Andrew is left alone again with his thoughts, wondering what Neil could have possibly meant by that.

***

            Two days later, the Ravens release a press statement saying that Neil Josten has left their team due to a serious illness that compromises his performance on the court. _We do not have a final statement from Mr. Josten to release to the press as of yet, but his coach and teammates find it unlikely he will be able to play Exy on a collegiate or professional team again,_ the statement says. _We are unhappy to lose such a promising player, but the Ravens will continue to play and win as they always have. The team, as always, comes before the individual, and we do not consider this a setback._

            “It’s hardly the worst it could have been,” Neil observes when Kevin shoves his tablet in Neil’s face to display the article. “I was expecting them to say I was kicked off.”

            “Do you think Riko would offer you amnesty if you came back?”

            Neil shrugs. “It’s possible he thinks you guys kidnapped me. It doesn’t matter either way, because I won’t be coming back.”

            “And do you think—Jean—”

            “I’m sure Riko is making him suffer. That doesn’t really matter either—Jean’s survived much worse, and he’ll be out of there soon anyway.”

            “Jeremy said he’d be happy to see Jean’s tryout for the Trojans.”

            Neil nods, fierce and approving. “He’s going to be fine, Kevin.”

            Kevin, who looks like he’s never known the meaning of _fine_ in his life, nods in return. “The press is going to—”

            “We are going to Columbia,” Andrew says abruptly. “Stop worrying about the press.” It’s a decision he’s just come up with, but it feels right. He can get Kevin’s mind off the news and scope out Neil in one fell swoop. And it’ll stop Aaron from spending the weekend with that girl he thinks he’s in love with.

            “Columbia? We were just there.”

            “And?” And Andrew thinks Neil would look good in tight black clothes in the crowd at Eden’s Twilight. And Andrew has something he can slip in Neil’s drink to make him talk. And Andrew doesn’t like how those two thoughts coincided, and not for the first time he feels the drowning tide of anger at the worry of being like _them_ —

            “And so why do we need to go again now?”

            “So you will get drunk and shut the fuck up about the press,” Andrew says. “And so Neil and I can get better acquainted. The next stupid question will be your last.”

            Kevin narrows his eyes. “Neil is hurt—”

            “Neil has played in much worse conditions than this, and I know you know that because you saw me do it,” Neil says. “I’m _fine_.”

            Kevin flinches like Neil had punched him, and doesn’t say another word. Their agonizingly complex power dynamics and constant guilt tripping are starting to bore Andrew. Neil’s willingness to go along with Andrew’s plan without knowing what it entails, however, is not.

            “Get dressed for Eden’s Twilight,” he says. “We’ll leave in an hour.”

***

            As they step into Eden’s Twilight, Andrew notes that Neil is uncomfortable, which is a good first sign. The clothes Andrew had provided for him are making him uncomfortable, the crowds are making him uncomfortable, and the darkness and the noise are making him uncomfortable—not a bad thing, because getting Neil out of his element, and out of the carefully constructed personality he’s built for himself is the first step to getting the truth.

            (And if Neil _does_ look good in the tight black clothes? Well, Andrew’s not in the business of lying to himself. Neil is a false start, an illusion, a riddle, but those things don’t mean that Andrew can’t acknowledge that he is, when given the chance, also remarkably attractive. Even with the yellowing bruises on his face, he’s turning a few heads.)

            Nicky joins the dancefloor almost as soon as they arrive; the grim mood the others are sporting seems to be putting him off. Aaron wordlessly gets them a table while Andrew goes to get drinks. Kevin, for once, doesn’t follow him and instead down with Aaron.   

            “I’m just going to have a soda,” Neil says. “Nothing in it, okay? I told you I don’t drink.”

            “Your inner rabbit is showing,” Andrew says. “I’ll get you the fucking soda; go sit down.”

            Neil goes and sits with Kevin and Aaron—the three of them are a trio unlikely enough to make Andrew snort—and Andrew goes to see Roland.

            “Andrew! I wasn’t expecting you to be back so soon. I see you have a new addition to the crowd?”

            “I do,” Andrew says. “The usual, and then a soda.”

            “Coke okay?”

            “Whatever.”

            Roland takes this as the affirmative it is, pours a Coke can into a glass, and starts getting the drinks for the rest of the monsters. “Who’s the newbie?”

            “A problem.”

            “One you’re planning on solving tonight?”

            “Hopefully.”

            “Are there going to be any problems? You know that I like you to keep your fighting outside.”

            “That depends on him,” Andrew says. “I don’t know if he’s a runner or a fighter. We will see.” There’s a bit of both in Neil, he thinks: the rabbit that’s made nervous by the unfamiliar crowds at Eden’s Twilight, and the fox that spells out Riko’s destruction in front of a crowd of reporters. He’s not sure which one Neil will choose tonight, but he plans on finding out. “Just put that all on a tray; I will take it back.”

            “You got it.” Roland swiftly arranges the glasses on a drink tray for him and watches as Andrew bends at the knees to lift it. “Haven’t forgotten a thing from your cocktail waitering days, I see.”

            “I never do.”

            “Right. Well, you know where to find me if you need refills.”

            Andrew nods and heads off to the monsters’ table. Halfway there, he stops and pauses at one of the empty tables. He shoots a glance to make sure Neil isn’t looking, and then one quick moment later, he’s on the move again, now carrying a round of shots and one newly drugged glass of Coke.

            It’s not the most savory thing he’s ever done, but it’s far from the worst either. He has to protect the people he’s promised to protect, and sometimes that includes doing uncomfortable things. No one else has the backbone to do them.

            When he sets the drinks down, Kevin immediately takes two of the shots and throws them back like water; Aaron is only a second behind. Sometimes Andrew wonders if his entire life is just watching their budding alcoholism from the sidelines—but then again, it’s not like he’s never had his own problems with addiction. He never promised to protect them from themselves.

            Neil takes his glass but doesn’t drink right away; he’s still scanning the crowd—either making sure he’s not getting the kind of attention he doesn’t want, or searching for potential escape routes. If it’s the second, Andrew may have a problem on his hands once Neil realizes he’s been drugged.

            A few shots later, Kevin and Aaron migrate away from the table, either to find someone to dance with or order more drinks, and Neil and Andrew are left alone. In another world, maybe Andrew would be waiting for Neil to do something other than take a sip of the soda he’d drugged, but in this one, he can’t let himself think about that.

            Neil presses the hand that had been holding the cold glass to the bruised side of his face and asks, “How long are we staying here?”

            “As long as it takes for Kevin to forget he’s in a losing race with mortality,” Andrew says flatly, and leans back in his seat. He doesn’t like bar-height stools; his legs never reach the rung halfway down the legs where your feet are supposed to rest, and having his legs swing aimlessly makes him feel annoyingly childish.

            Neil sighs and picks up his glass to take a drink. It’s a millimeter away from his lips when he freezes and sets it back down like it bit him.

            Andrew goes very still. “Not a fan of Coke?”

            Neil turns the full force of his burning blue eyes on him. “If you thought I wouldn’t notice,” he says with the savage precision he uses to rip reporters new assholes, “you’re sorely mistaken.”

            Andrew just looks at him. For the first time in what may be years, he’s surprised. Mildly so, but—still.

            “Is this why you wanted me to come tonight? So you could drug my drink? What were you planning on doing to me?” When Andrew doesn’t respond, Neil leans in closer. His eyes look almost feral; the eyes of an animal seeing a familiar trap close shut around it. “ _What were you planning on doing_?”

            “I want to make sure you are telling the truth,” Andrew says. He’s feeling a little blanker than usual, now. He doesn’t mind being painted the villain, it’s just—it feels like Neil _trusted_ Andrew not to hurt him, even when Neil has been hurt so much already. It feels like Neil considers this a betrayal. And that makes no fucking sense at all, because no one trusts Andrew, except maybe the people he’s sworn to dedicate his life to protecting. Even then, he knows they have their misgivings. “I was going to make sure your story checked out when you were too wasted to lie.”

            “First of all, I am _never_ too wasted to lie,” Neil says, leaning back and sounding a little offended. “Second of all, if there’s anything to you want to ask me, you can just do it. There are some things I can’t tell you because it’s safer for you not to know, or because—just because, but I’ll give you as much truth as I can. Third of all, if you ever try to drug me again, that will be the last time you ever see me.” He meets Andrew’s gaze, stone-cold and resolute. “I did not walk out of the Nest just to be owned by someone else.” He shoves the glass away from himself and stands up. “I think I’m done here. If you won’t drive me back to Palmetto, I’ll fucking walk.”

            Andrew watches him walk away with a sense of detachment, and then, without really planning to, says, “Wait.”

            Neil pauses. He half-turns. The bruised half of his face is hidden in shadow, the other half illuminated in the glowing, colorful lights of the dancefloor. He looks fractured and furious and unknowable.

            “What.” He doesn’t say it like a question.

            “A game,” Andrew says, and doesn’t elaborate.

            Neil sighs and turns back to the table. “What?”

            “A game,” Andrew repeats. “You tell me something true, and I’ll tell you something true. That way we will not give away ourselves for free.”

            “Like you were going to force me to?” Neil says harshly.

            “That was insurance,” Andrew says, tearing his eyes away from Neil’s ice-blue gaze and focusing them on a spot a few inches above his left shoulder. Thinking is a bit easier that way. “I could not be sure you were telling me the truth because there was no reason for you to. If I tell you something in return, I will know you have motive not to lie to me.” He slams back the last of his shot and decides he’ll need a few more to get through this night. “If you are looking for an apology, know you are not getting one. I protect the people I need to, in any way I have to. You are nothing to me.”

            “I wasn’t looking for one,” Neil says, but he sits back down. “Get me a new soda and let’s play this game of yours.”

            Andrew stares at him for a long moment, because no one— _no_ _one_ —tells Andrew what to do, but then decides that he may as well get a new soda when he goes to get more alcohol. When he comes back, he passes a (unopened) can of Coke to Neil and settles back down on the annoyingly tall chair. “Ask me a question.”

            Neil looks at him for a moment and then says, “Is anything off limits?”

            “I will tell you if something you ask is.”

            “Why did Aaron kill your foster brother?”

            Andrew blinks and then leans back in his seat a little. Out of all the things he could have imagined Neil asking, that was not one of them. “Are you sure you want to know?”

            “Would I be asking if I didn’t?”

            “I was raped,” Andrew says. Passive voice. In this sentence, Andrew is the object. The verb is being performed upon him, not by him. And it’s an ugly verb, isn’t it? An ugly, harsh word that is, even now, avoided by everyone he knows. They skitter around it like it’s a cockroach, replacing it with prettier euphemisms and significant silences. They are afraid of the word because it forces them to acknowledge the ugliness that lives inside of Andrew, because it is easier to dismiss that ugliness as monstrosity. But Andrew? Andrew is not afraid of it because _they_ took the ability to be afraid of a damn thing from him a long time ago. Other people have the privilege of being afraid of talking about what happened to him. He doesn’t get that privilege, _because_ of what happened to him. He has lost his fear, has had it taken from him. “By Drake, if that was not clear. He raped me. Had been raping me.” He blinks, sips his drink. “Aaron killed him. Sadly not in time.”

            “When would have been in time?” Neil asks. Andrew’s not looking at him, but his voice is surprisingly steady.

            “Years ago,” Andrew says, and turns to meet his gaze. “Most people say they’re sorry, Neil Josten.”

            “I don’t think you’re the kind of man who’d want my pity,” Neil says. “I am angry on your behalf, though, if that counts as anything. Because you don’t seem to be.”

            “The world is far too cruel a place to waste anger on,” Andrew says boredly. “Didn’t they tell you I don’t feel things anymore?”

            “It’s not the world that’s cruel.” Neil does sound angry, Andrew registers with a dull stab of surprise. Neil Josten, the world’s punching bag, still has it in him to be angry when other people get hurt. “It’s the people in it. And I find it hard to believe that a man who’d die to protect his family doesn’t feel anything.”

            Andrew doesn’t have anything to say to that, because he isn’t the in the business of persuading stupid strikers what he really feels or does not feel, so instead he says, “It is my turn.”

            Neil, who looks like he hadn’t been finished talking, just raises an eyebrow and sips his Coke rather than pursue the point. “I’m waiting.”

            “Who are the contacts you are waiting on hearing from?”

            “Family. In England.”

            “Mafia?”

            Neil meets his eyes over the rim of his Coke can, puts it down, and then, very deliberately and without breaking eye contact, says, “No.”

            He’s lying, Andrew knows that. But Andrew also knows that Neil wants him to know that. Neil is letting him know the truth without telling him the truth, because the truth might get them both killed. Running around telling people about your mafia contacts is a good way to do that.

            “My turn?” Neil asks.

            Andrew nods.

            “What is Kevin offering you in return for your protection?”

            “What makes you think that he is offering me anything at all?”       

            Neil gives him a disbelieving look.

            “He’s offering me a reason to keep living,” Andrew says flatly. “He’s doing a pretty terrible job of it. Exy is not a reason to live.”

            “I don’t know if I believe that.”

            “You are a junkie just like him, so you wouldn’t.”

            “What _would_ be a good reason to live?” Neil asks. Andrew shakes his head.

            “Only one question a round, junkie. My turn.”

            “You _definitely_ asked two questions—”

            “My turn.”

            Neil sighs wearily and makes a permissive gesture. “Fine.”

            “What is your real name?”

            Neil freezes. His eyes flicker towards the nearest exit and his hands spasm, but he doesn’t run. “What means you think—”

            “Because I am not stupid, and I know that if you have any mafia ties at all, the Moriyamas would force you to change it so if your family got caught, their name would stay clean.”

            Neil’s hands clench and unclench on the table. There is a war raging behind his eyes. Andrew downs another shot and waits. The buzz of the alcohol is making life an increment more bearable.

            There’s a long silence, and then Neil blurts out, “I’m named after my father, I—” He pauses, takes a deep breath, collects himself. “I can’t tell you. Right now. But if you need something—something that’s true, call me Abram. It’s my middle name. It’s the only name of mine that’s never changed, the only—it’s what my mother would call me when we didn’t want to think about my father.”

            Well. A lot to unpack there, clearly. Neil—Abram—has more issues than Andrew had thought, and he’d already know the man was as fucked up as Andrew himself. But Andrew has used up his turn, and he’ll have to wait to ask about the changing names, the reason Neil can’t tell him his first name, and the probably-abusive father some other time.

            Neil is obviously shaken, and he waits a long time before speaking again, his hands fidgeting on the table while he battles down whatever impulses or memories Andrew’s question conjured up. Finally, he raises his head and asks, “Why are you helping me?”

            Andrew looks at him for a moment, and then says, “I’m not. You yourself said you’ll be dead in a few years at most. You probably would have lived much longer if you had stayed with the Ravens. One could almost say I am being counterproductive to your existence.” He slams back his next shot and decides it’ll be his last for the night; he still needs to drive them home, and the last thing he needs on his record right now is a drunk driving ticket. Neil’s question is irritating him almost more than he can stand, and he can’t quite put his finger on why. “You are nothing to me. I hate you.” He flicks his fingers dismissively and turns to see if he can spot Aaron, Kevin, or Nicky anywhere in the crowd. When he does, he gestures them over and turns back to Neil. “We will be going soon.”

            Neil nods slowly. He looks like he’s thinking about something, deeply. “You can have one more turn, if you want.”

            Andrew considers him, sitting there in all of his battered, pensive glory, fiercely good looking and completely unaware of it. “How did you know the soda was drugged?”

            “It’s a fairly common sedative,” Neil says. His face is hard to read. “You were smart to use it, because it’s rarely detected before it’s too late. But it’s been used on me before, and I recognized the smell.”

            _It’s been used on me_ —passive voice, with Neil as the object. Andrew feels something in his gut, and whatever it is, he’d hate it if he could.          

            “Who?”

            “What?”

            “Who drugged you?”

            Neil smiles tiredly. “Who do you think? Riko has his little games, and he doesn’t like it when I bite back. Much easier to drug me up.”

            “What did he do?” Andrew’s voice doesn’t hold any of the tightness he feels inside, but it’s laser-focused, so sharp it can cut through the noise of the club without effort.

            Neil looks down, drums his fingers briefly on the table, and looks up again. “I don’t know. Can’t remember. Jean said it wasn’t anything different than usual, but—how can I be sure? I can’t remember.”

            It’s the exact opposite of the problem Andrew’s been having his whole life: people have done terrible things to him, and he can’t help but remember them all in picture-perfect detail. But Riko has done terrible things to Neil, and there’s nothing there but a terrible blankness for Neil to fill with his imagination. Andrew’s not sure which is worse.

            “Why are we leaving so _early_?” Nicky’s unbearably loud voice echoes around Andrew’s head so forcefully he has to take a moment to blink away the ringing before responding.

            “Because I said so,” is his only response, but it’s enough to make Nicky turn away from Andrew and towards Neil.

            “Neil,” he says with a ridiculous solemnity, “you look _so good_ in that outfit, did I tell you that? _So good_. I have a boyfriend, though. Did you know that? His name is _Eric_ and I _love_ him. Next time we come here we should dance together, okay? You didn’t dance at all tonight. Next time will you dance with me?”

            Neil looks up at him with a confused expression that’s bordering on endeared, and says, “Yeah, Nicky, next time I’ll dance with you.”

            Nicky squeals, and flings his arms around him, and Neil, dead man walking, Raven runaway, rebel without a cause, very cautiously hugs him back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading, guys!! the response to the last chapter was SO OUT OF THIS WORLD omg thank you to everyone who left kudos and comments!!! you guys literally made me weep with joy, i'm so happy everyone is enjoying the fic! it's such a lovely validating feeling to see people enjoying something that i'm having so much fun writing :D you guys are the best. 
> 
> if you'd like, you can [follow me on tumblr](https://iaquilam.tumblr.com/) and/or check out and reblog the [moodboard](https://iaquilam.tumblr.com/post/157424424070/better-than-a-grave-or-a-hearse-by-iaquilam-what) i made for this fic! thank you so much for reading, and i'll see you in two weeks!


	4. Stuck and Running from the Bullets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okAY LISTEN TO ME I AM SO SORRY THERE WAS NO CHAPTER LAST WEEKEND OH MY GOD literally i cannot explain how sorry i am if u follow me on tumblr then you may seen that last week was my spring break, and Shit Happened (as it tends to do in my life). Basically I didn't have much writing for this chapter done on Friday bc i was planning to binge write over the weekend and then a snap decision was made by my family to leave for a road trip on saturday (???? literally why). and then, because life is glorious and splendid and works against me, i forgot to take my laptop. SO THERE WAS NO CHAPTER AND I'M SO SORRY good stuff happens in this chapter tho so hopefully that makes up for it. Also if it makes you feel better, it's about 11:30 PM where i am and i have to wake up at 3 AM tomorrow morning for an early flight...so if you're angry at me for makgin you suffer, know that I too will be suffering bc of this now. 
> 
> ALSO i know i haven't replied to the comments from last chapter there's literally no excuse for that i'm just THE WORST. i literally have TWENTY SIX comments waiting to be replied to in my inbox oh my god. BUT I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT I HAVE READ ALL OF THEM AND I APPRECIATE ALL OF THEM AND I LOVE YOU ALL FOR COMMENTING AND THEY ALL MADE MY DAY AND I'M GONNA START REPLYING TO THEM SOON. 
> 
> and then the last thing before you finally go read this long overdue chapter is that the chapter title today is from sign of the times by harry styles, not because it's really an andreil at all but just because i've been listening to it and it's makingg me nostalgic TM so i decided to make that lyric the title this week. ok that's all go read

“What is he doing here,” Andrew says. He delivers the words with just the right amount of inflection to make them seem like more of an accusation than a question.

            Kevin scowls at him. “He’s here to practice. Obviously.”

            “Don’t be smart with me. There is nothing obvious about it.” Andrew directs his next accusation at Neil, who’s currently leaning on a too-big racquet by Kevin’s side: “You said you gave up Exy.”

            “I gave up collegiate Exy,” Neil says, tilting his chin up. “There’s no harm in training with Kevin when there’s no one else around.”

            Andrew snorts. “There is harm in everything, Neil Josten. Do not expect me to cry at your funeral.”

            “Trust me, I’m not expecting anyone to cry at my funeral. Being chopped into pieces and distributed into various dumpsters while significant amounts of money change hands is more my style.” Neil says this with such bland cheer that it’s hard to tell if he’s joking; by the sick look on Kevin’s face, he’s a little too close to the mark even if he is.

            Interesting. Like most other things about Neil.

            Andrew definitely overuses that word when it comes to Neil, but there’s no helping it. It’s either that or find a different word to use, and he doesn’t think he’d like the words he’d find if he chose to reach for them. _Intriguing_ might work. _Enjoyable_ is too nice towards both of them, as it assumes Neil isn’t a little shit to be around, and Andrew can enjoy things. _Fascinating_ just feels wrong. Maybe _puzzling_ , but—

            “Get in the goal, Andrew.”

            When Andrew levels Kevin with his blankest, most unhelpful stare, Kevin stamps his foot and adds, “Please.”

            “Don’t fucking say that,” Andrew says. Every muscle in his body has gone still.

            “Andrew—”

            “Oh, shut up, Kevin,” Neil says abruptly. “He’ll get in the goal when he’s ready. I’ll take you through the Raven drills; you’re out of practice.”

            “ _Me_?” Kevin says with such a degree of incredulity that his passion is personally offensive to Andrew, “I am _not_ out of practice, you—”

            They storm off to collect some balls together, perfectly matched in stride despite their height difference. Something about the whole situation is making Andrew feel ugly inside: their passion where he has only hollowness, Kevin’s petulant _please_ , Neil’s obvious and successful attempt at getting Kevin to leave Andrew alone when he needed a minute. But who is he kidding. He’s always ugly inside.

            He shakes off the stillness that the _please_ had cloaked him in, coming back to the present. It’s no small feat, given that he can still hear his own voice begging begging begging—he can’t think about that right now. He hasn’t said that word in years, even after seeing Drake again last Easter. There is nothing now on earth that could make him beg for anything.

            Neil is mocking Kevin loudly as they switch off doing Raven drills, making a point of trying to do the exercises faster and with more precision. It’s an obviously botched cause, because Kevin hasn’t deteriorated a bit from his Raven days, but Neil is having fun with it anyway. When he’s on the Court, giving the drills his all and taking the piss out of Kevin for missing a shot, he doesn’t seem to notice or care that his face is still beat to hell or that his left arm swings stiffly or that he’s sporting a painful limp. He’s completely lost in the motion of it, completely swallowed by the physical moment of being there on the Court, practicing with Kevin with the familiar weight of a racquet in his hands. It’s a state of being Andrew would envy if he could: Neil _wants_ to be there with a clarity that is sickening. Neil _wants_ to be playing Exy more than Andrew has ever seen anyone want anything, and the beautiful, beautiful tragedy of it is that Neil will, once he leaves Palmetto, never play Exy again.

            They make a good pair: Neil, the man who wants something more than words can express, and can never get it, and Andrew, who has that very thing but would throw it away in an instant. It’s not fair, but then again, the world never is.

            He picks up the heavy goalkeeper’s racquet, and stalks over to the goal, picking up a ball from where one has ricocheted across the court. With barely a glance in Kevin’s direction, he whips the ball across the court and into one of the cones they’re using for practice. He’s not aiming for any particular one, so it’s not really impressive that he hits the one he hits, but it's gratifying to see their startled expressions. So much for Raven superiority.

            Neil opens his mouth to say something, but Kevin—wiser simply because he has known Andrew for longer—grabs more balls and his racquet, and heads over to the goal without comment.

            They start a steady rhythm together, the three of them, with Kevin and Neil playing against each other and Andrew trying to block both of them. Neil is good—not as good as Kevin, but then again no one is—even in his injured state, mainly because he’s perfectly tuned to Kevin. It’s obvious that he’s been trained on a team that gives all the glory shots to one player, because his passes are damn near perfect and he can always predict what Kevin’s next move is going to be: clear proof of his days of setting of goals for Riko. Kevin, on the other hand, was never so deprived of winning shots, and has been the glory player for the Foxes for a while now, and so can’t quite predict Neil’s moves in advance.

            Andrew, of course, could block them both in his sleep. That is just one of the truths of the world: cruelty, boredom, blocking out strikers.

            Neil looks good when he’s sweaty, even in his ridiculous, ill-fitting orange gear. He’s offensively good-looking. Andrew finds it obnoxious, and aims his next pass directly at Neil’s head. Neil, obviously expecting this, catches his pass perfectly and grins at him from underneath his helmet.

            “I may have given up Exy, but I’m not completely incompetent, Minyard.”

            Andrew rolls his eyes under his helmet and offers Neil a sarcastic two-fingered salute.

            “Focus,” Kevin snarls, and maybe it’s only Andrew, but he thinks that Neil jumps a little.

            So the court isn’t free of demons for the mouthy striker after all. The ghost of Riko’s violence haunts him, even here.

            (Andrew’s not sure why he tacks on the _even here_ : _here_ is means next to a former higher-ranking Raven, in front of a man who tried to drug him, in close proximity of several heavy and dangerous racquets. _Here_ should not be synonymous with safe for Neil Josten, and Andrew is irritated that he’d somehow thought it would be.)

            At the end of the practice, Kevin has not scored at all, because Andrew knows exactly how he plays, and it would take something drastic for him to miss a shot at this point. But Neil does score: only once, when Andrew is a little distracted. And he only manages that one point because he does the unexpected: he steals a glory shot from Kevin and puts it in the exact opposite direction that Kevin would have. Andrew is a fraction of a second too late to block it.

            When the first glow of the dawn appears over the top bleachers of the Foxhole, they troop back inside to shower and snap at each other about their form. Or at least, that’s what Kevin does; Neil sits down and drinks an entire bottle of Gatorade. Andrew watches him.

            “Why are you looking at me like that?”         

            “I’m not,” Andrew says, and then immediately follows it up with, “Like what?”

            “Like you’re impressed.”

            “I am not impressed.” He’s not. Intrigued would be a better word. Impressed would imply that hitting a ball into a net with a stick is impressive.

            “You are, a little. Maybe.” When Andrew doesn’t reply, he shrugs. “Or maybe not. But you’re definitely looking at me.”

            He has no idea how attractive he is, with his jersey riding up his stomach to expose two inches of hard muscle and thick scars, and his damp auburn hair falling into his blue, blue eyes. He has _no idea_ and it makes Andrew furious.

            “Which doesn’t make sense,” Neil continues, slow like he’s tired, slow like he’s thinking. “Because you hate me. Right?” He looks at Andrew for confirmation. “You hate me.”

            “Just because I hate you doesn’t mean I wouldn’t blow you,” Andrew says. It’s ninety percent to get a reaction out of him, and ten percent because it’s true. He stands up, takes off his jersey—for a moment Neil’s eyes go even wider, like he really thinks Andrew will drop to his knees right here and now—and goes into the showers without further comment.

            Neil is quiet all the way back to the dorms.

***

            The rooftop is usually quiet at this time of night, but tonight Andrew can’t stand silence, so he has his earbuds in. It’s the sort of handicap he wouldn’t generally subject himself to, because it does hinder his ability to hear if anyone is sneaking up on him, but because he doubts that anyone in Fox Tower is stupid enough to sneak up on him, he’s not going to worry about it. And if he thought there was a chance the Ravens could get into the Tower—well, he wouldn’t have left Kevin alone.

            It’s the dark, claustrophobic hours right before dawn, which means that between his swinging feet and the pool of streetlight down below is a stretch of pitch black that seems to suck everything light and bright into itself. This is what prompts Andrew to add the headphones to his nightly smoke: it helps drown out the manic-smiled demon in his head that nuzzles closer and closer to the edge, enchanted by that stretch of darkness. He wouldn’t do it—he wouldn’t break his promises when he still has to deliver on them—but it’s intoxicating to sit here and picture the fall over and over again, riding out the weak adrenaline rush that comes with the thought of being suspended in the blackness with only the bone-breaking impact of landing ahead of him.

            What a healthy coping mechanism. Bee would be so proud.

            Andrew cranks his headphones up another few notches and slides back from the edge of the roof a little. It’s a good song, one that manages to be dark and upbeat at the same time, with a good balance of plucky guitar and verses that either spoken word or rap. He’s not any good at music stuff—at recognizing genres and artists and what’s popular; that’s more Nicky’s thing—but he likes it. It gives him a little color in the darkest hours of night.

            A figure materializes in the brightness of the streetlight below, hunch-shouldered and dressed in running clothes. After a moment of squinting, Andrew recognizes the glint of light off of auburn hair, and then spends the next few minutes silently asking a God he doesn’t believe in why He insists on tormenting Andrew with the infuriating puzzle of a man that is Neil Josten. Andrew would like one, _one_ Josten-free night. That’s all.

            Neil moves to the hazy edge of the light where he can still see but won’t be in the spotlight, and starts doing stretches. Andrew lights another cigarette and watches him. There is, he tells himself, no harm in watching.

            _There is harm in everything, Neil Josten,_ his own mind mocks back. Andrew turns his music the rest of the way up and flicks the butt of his cigarette off the edge of the roof out of habit.

            It lands right next to the toe of Neil’s sneaker.

            Neil freezes and then takes several steps back out of the light so that when he looks up, Andrew can barely see him. Knowing that he must look like a dark silhouette perched menacingly on the edge of the roof to Neil, Andrew takes out another cigarette and lights up, letting the flare of the lighter illuminate his face for a brief moment. Neil’s shadowy form relaxes and then, inexplicably, steps back into the light. They make eye contact for a few endless moments, and then Neil—that little _shit_ —raises two fingers to his forehead in a mimicry of Andrew’s mocking salute, and bends back down to keep stretching.

            He doesn’t stay out of the light this time. He just does his stretches in the glaring streetlight like he’s never been afraid in his life. Maybe he thinks Andrew would warn him if someone was coming, or something. Andrew doesn’t think that he would, but whatever. That’s Neil’s problem.

            Still, Andrew doesn’t go back inside until Neil takes off on his run.

***

            Andrew and Renee seem to have less time to spar these days; she’s writing a thesis for her theology class, and he’s kept busy with Kevin. So it’s a welcome relief when she texts him saying that she has a free hour to meet him in the gym, if he’s available and if he so wishes. It’s worded exactly like that because that’s the kind of person Renee is: she uses phrases like “if you so wish.” It’s ridiculous, and Andrew has never heard of correct grammar in his life (or at least that’s what he tells her when she tells him when she points out his incorrect use of _your_ and _you’re_ —he actually just does it to piss her off.)

            But because the world hates Andrew and he can’t have anything nice ever, Neil fucking Josten is in the gym when he arrives. He’s accompanied by Matt, who seems to be teaching him how to box, and the two of them are so immersed in what they’re doing that they seem not to notice Andrew walking in.

            “Shit form, Josten,” Andrew says as he passes them. Neil jumps and turns to look at him with wide eyes.

            “Shut up, Minyard, you don’t know how to box,” Matt says irritably. “He doesn’t know how to box, ignore him,” he tells Neil, who is now readjusting his form. “You’re doing great, don’t worry, Neil.”

            “Didn’t the Ravens teach you how to box?” Andrew asks, putting his gym bag down by his usual sparring mats and checking his phone. Renee is late.

            “The Ravens didn’t teach me how to do anything but take hits and shut up,” Neil says, dodging Matt’s (very gentle) right hook and getting back into form.

            “And they obviously weren’t even very good at that,” Andrew says drily. “You’re a slow learner.”

            “ _Minyard_ ,” Matt says. “I’m trying to teach him something useful, for God’s sake. Be quiet if you can’t be positive. Neil, get your feet a little farther apart or you’ll fall over if I hit you. A little farther than that. That’s perfect. Okay. Let’s try again. You’re going great, trust me.”

            Neil actually isn’t bad at boxing; give him a year and a little more muscle and he’d probably be able to hold his ground, but Andrew feels that if given the choice, Neil would still rather run than fight. When it comes to hitting, Neil is used to being on the receiving end.

            Renee gets there a few minutes later, apologizing profusely for her lateness, and she and Andrew get ready to spar. Matt’s not actually wrong; Andrew has no idea how to properly box. But that’s never stopped him from starting fights anyway—good form doesn’t matter when your nose is dripping blood on the pavement and your wrist feels like it’s broken and you’re smiling because you want to feel something. He and Renee have something very different between them; their fights are not about rules, they’re about breaking them.

            Matt and Neil wind down their lesson just as he and Renee are really getting started, and so Andrew feels the scrutiny of the two of them as they walk out. He doesn’t try harder for Neil’s sake, because he doesn’t need to impress anyone, especially a Raven striker who will be dead in a few years at best. He definitely doesn’t need to do that.

            “You’re a little distracted,” Renee observes as the door slams shut behind Matt and Neil, drowning out Matt’s raucous laughter at a joke of Neil’s. “Any reason why?”

            “This is fighting, not therapy,” Andrew reminds her. “I have Bee for that.”

            “Sure,” Renee says, and then pauses to duck three quick, successive punches that Andrew aims at her head. “Goodness, no mercy today?”

            “No mercy when you’re asking stupid questions.” Andrew grunts as she stomps down hard on his foot and tries to kick his feet from under him. He manages to stay upright, but he’ll be limping for a day or two. “Maybe I am distracted because my full time job is keeping Kevin alive when many people very much don’t want him to be.”

            “You’ve never been one to back down from a challenge, though.”

            “On the contrary, I do nothing but avoid challenges. I don’t care about challenging myself. I don’t care about anything.”

            Renee ducks under his fist and takes a few steps back, frowning. It looks as sweet on her face as any other expression. “We both know that’s not quite true, Andrew.”

            Andrew raises one eyebrow half a centimeter. “I do not care about anything.”

            Renee looks at him for a long moment, and then says, “Andrew.”

            “If the next sentence that comes out of your mouth is about God, I will set this gym on fire.”

            “It’s not going to be.” She looks at him for a moment, and then says, “Just let me get through this, Andrew. I know you think you can’t feel anything without the pills, but—”

            “Shut up.”

            “—I know that you can. That you’ll be able to. I have faith—”

            “And I do not. This conversation is over.”

            Renee holds up both hands. “I understand, Andrew. I know you don’t want to talk about it, and that you don’t need me to understand or care or ask you about it. But I want you to know that you are cared about, even if you don’t think you can care back. That’s all.”

            “What did I say about this not being therapy?” He’s deliberately rude, but anyone else would have a knife three inches into their eye by now for what they’d said, so it’s a mark of his respect for Renee that he doesn’t reach for one. If there’s anything he can get close to hating these days, it’s people telling him they understand how he feels. They can’t understand because he feels nothing at all.

            Renee sighs and puts her fists back up. “Just—just remember, okay?”

            Andrew dignifies that by responding with a sharp upper hook.

            They finish two more rounds of sparring before they have to call it quits. It’s an invigorating match that Andrew needed more than he’d like to admit; if his sessions with Bee are therapy for his mind, his sessions with Renee are therapy for his body. He can appreciate the ability to think of nothing but where to land his next hit—it’s a godsend for his relentless brain.

            That night, irritated with himself for not having done it sooner, Andrew sends Renee a text with the picture of the holographic purse he’d seen in Columbia and the caption _thought ud like this. also I never forget anything._

            She’ll get it.

***

            Midnight practice with Neil has become a routine without anyone really talking about it. Two nights with him on the court pass, then three, then a whole week. He wouldn’t admit it to anyone else, but Andrew finds it to be a welcome change from the mind-numbing practices with just Kevin. As necessary as they are, Andrew is not a fan of missing out on valuable smoking or sleeping time to stand around blocking a ball with a stick for hours on end. Neil, at least, usually pisses Kevin off enough to make things marginally more entertaining.

            Tonight’s practice is grueling; Kevin is pushing himself harder than ever, and Neil is uncharacteristically silent, even brooding. Every time Kevin gives them a few minutes to rehydrate and rest, he runs over to his bag to check his new phone. If it had been anyone else, Andrew wouldn’t have found it unusual, but he knows that not only does Neil have an inexplicable aversion to phones, but also considers it a sin to focus on anything but Exy while on the Court. He’s not the only one noticing, either; Kevin asks him about it after the fourth or fifth time it happens.

            “Mind your own business, Kevin.”

            Kevin looks impatient and (presumably) asks again in French.

            “ _je veux que tu te mêles de tes propres affaires en français aussi, Kevin_ ,” Neil says. He sounds like a little shit in French, too.

            Kevin drops it, looking disproportionally offended, and ends the practice not long after that, saying it’s getting late. It is creeping into the wee hours by now, but he and Andrew have practiced into the dawn before, so Andrew’s guessing it’s because Neil’s lack of focus is pissing him off. It’s hard to be a junkie on your own.

            When they get inside the locker rooms, Kevin storms into the showers without even taking the time to criticize their performance that night. Andrew raises an eyebrow at Neil and starts taking his gear off silently between sips of Gatorade—not as good as candy bar, but it’s the biggest sugar rush he’ll get for now. Neil just shrugs and fiddles with his phone for a moment before putting it back in his bag and looking at Andrew.

            “Can I take a turn at our truth game?” he asks.

            Andrew realizes it’s the first time they’ve been alone together since Andrew had—well, no reason to think about that. He’d just been saying the truth, and if Neil doesn’t like it, they don’t have to talk about it again.

            “Do what you want, Josten.”

            “Why do you hate me?” It’s not plaintive, not like Neil’s especially bothered by it. It just sounds like he’s curious.

            “Because you are obnoxious and have very little regard for the consequences of your actions.” Because sitting with you feels like looking down at that bit of dark sky between my feet and the ground and thinking about jumping. Because looking at you feels like getting punched and feeling the sting of it in my bones. Because I hate that feeling. I hate feeling.

            “Okay,” Neil says. “It’s your turn.”

            “Where did you learn to speak French?” It’s not the question he wanted to ask, or the question he should have asked, but it comes out anyway.

            Neil frowns. “Mostly from my mother. Some from Jean. There were a few years where my mom and I—we moved around a lot. So I had to learn a lot of languages really quickly, and sound as natural as possible.”

            It’s more information than he strictly needed to volunteer, but Andrew isn’t complaining. He takes another sip of Gatorade and takes off his jersey, satisfied with this round of their game. If he gets into the showers quickly, he can bully the others into getting back to dorms before dawn, which means he can grab a few hours of sleep before his criminal science class. They’re studying decomposition, which isn’t exactly a part of criminal science he’s had personal experience with, so he probably shouldn’t miss another day of notes—

            “Are you going to kiss me?” Neil asks.

            The question is so disconnected from Andrew’s train of thought that it takes a minute for him to realize that Neil is talking to him. He turns, slowly, and finds Neil still sitting on the locker room benches, a safe distance away. Again, he doesn’t look anything but curious.

            “Are you taking another turn?”

            Neil shrugs. “If you want me to be.”

            Kevin is still showering in the next room, but he may as well be galaxies away. In the dimness of the nearly-morning locker room, they could be the only two people on the planet. Maybe that’s why Andrew puts down his jersey and comes to sit by Neil—far enough away that it’s not an invitation, close enough that it’s not a rejection.

            “I will not touch you,” Andrew says, “if you do not want me to.”

            “Oh,” Neil says. “Okay.”

            And then nothing else. But he’s looking at Andrew—not at his eyes, at his lips—and Andrew is looking back—and there is again that feeling of being balanced on the rooftop—and if Andrew would rip out his heart to make it stop beating faster, _he would_ , because he does not want any part of Neil inside him.

            “Is that a yes or a no?” is what he says.

            What Neil says is: “It’s a yes.”

            And so there’s nothing stopping Andrew from leaning in and kissing him. And so because Andrew is not in the business of not doing things he wants to do—because there are so rarely things he wants to do—Andrew leans in and kisses Neil Josten.

            It feels like jumping off of the roof of Fox Tower and throwing himself into the oblivion of the night air. It’s the thrill of starting a fight, the thrill of slamming his fist into a wall, the thrill of _feeling_. Neil Josten is an adrenaline rush, and a bad idea, and an unsolvable enigma, but when his lips are pressed against Andrew’s, he is only a math problem whose answer Andrew already knows.

            Andrew is the first to pull back, and Neil doesn’t pursue him when their lips part. Instead, he leans back from Andrew, his expression simultaneously startled and satisfied. He is, for some insane, annoying, and unknown reason, sitting on his hands. There’s a thick silence between them, unglamorous and matter-of-fact.

            “Why are you sitting on your hands,” Andrew says in the tone he uses when Kevin’s being difficult; an accusation instead of a question.

            “So I wouldn’t accidentally touch you,” Neil says, as if it were obvious. “I figured you wouldn’t want me to? Since you didn’t give me permission?”

            Andrew stands up and points to the showers. “Get out.”

            Neil stands up, pulls off his jersey—Andrew gets a glimpse of a shockingly scarred torso; even for a Raven, Neil has been put through the shredder—and disappears into the showers without another word. Andrew is left with his own infuriated thoughts.

            This is a bad idea. Kissing Neil Josten was a bad decision.

            Andrew has always been good at bad decisions.

***

            Two days later, the USC Trojans release a statement saying that they’re proud and excited to welcome Jean Moreau onto their team.

            “We understand this is an unconventional transfer, as it’s in the middle of the season, but we have confidence that both the Ravens and the Trojans will benefit from this. Jean is looking forward to playing with the Trojans and wishes nothing but good luck to his old team,” Jeremy Knox is saying when Kevin turns the TV on.

            “He made it,” Kevin says in a wondering tone. “He made it?”

            “He made it,” Neil says. Unlike Kevin, he doesn’t look incredulous. He looks satisfied. Grimly so.

            “That’s good, right?” Nicky says timidly. “We were rooting for him, right?”

            Kevin rounds on him with an irritated expression, but Neil beats him to it.

            “We were definitely rooting for him,” he agrees. “He was really great for both of us in the Nest. He deserves to be playing for a team that’s going to appreciate him. He deserves to be safe.”

            Nicky nods, looking gratified that he’s being scolded for not being up to date on the complex politics between Kevin, Neil, and the Ravens.

            “Riko is going to—”

            “—be angry,” Neil says. “Are you still afraid of that?”

            Kevin looks furious. “Neil, you of all people should know that Riko is something to be afraid of.”

            Neil’s expression—that grimly pleased smile—doesn’t change. “I’m done being scared of Riko. And you’ll have to be someday too. If you ever want to be number one, you’re going to have to act like it.”

            “Stop it,” Kevin snaps. “You’re never going to play Exy again, so you have nothing left to lose. I still have a career to think of, and careers don’t start with disrespecting the most powerful Exy player in the game right now.”

            Neil looks like he’s been punched, but he rallies quickly. “You need to stop thinking of him like that. He can’t ruin you if you ruin him first. I don’t get why you’re not fighting back.”

            “You’re going to be _gone_!” Kevin yells. “You’re going to be gone, and I’m going to be left here to deal with Riko trying to—trying to ruin me, and you’re going to be gone, so don’t tell me what I should be doing. I don’t get why you haven’t run off already.”           

            Neil’s on his feet, already moving towards the door; this whole time his body has been tense and poised for flight. He’s a ticking time bomb, and he’s ready to detonate. He’s ready to run. “Just say the fucking word, Kevin, and I’m gone.”

            Andrew, who’s been silent this whole time, takes one step to the side. He doesn’t look at Neil, doesn’t say anything, just steps two feet to the right so that he’s blocking the door.

            “Step the fuck aside, Minyard.” Neil looks furious, but more importantly, Neil looks trapped.

            Andrew knows what trapped feels like. “Kevin,” he says, “be a nice boy and apologize to your friend.”

            “This isn’t your fight, Andrew.”

            “On the contrary,” Andrew drawls, “it very much is my fight, Kevin. Have you forgotten our deal? Have you forgotten who drove to Evermore at the ass crack of dawn to get Neil when you couldn’t speak out of terror of what Riko would do to him?” He pauses, glances at Neil with as much disdain as he can muster. “Our little rabbit is going to run if you two don’t kiss and make up, so hurry.”

            Kevin and Neil look broken and furious and very unapologetic. Andrew is supremely bored. Their politics are boring.

             “Stop telling me how to deal with Riko,” Kevin grits out after a moment. “I know him better than you do.”

            “I know you do,” Neil snaps. “And I know how to bleed better than you do, so stop telling me how to do that.”

            Kevin presses his lips together, and finally says, “Don’t run. It won’t be safe until you get ahold of your family.”

            “My family’s never been safe for me either,” Neil says. Nicky, in the corner, is wide-eyed and frozen, but his expression softens into sympathy at this. “I think I’m done here. Try to be happy for Jean, at least, Kevin.”

            When he turns back to the door, Andrew lets him leave, and then follows him out.

            “Not in a talking mood, Andrew,” Neil says the minute the door closes behind them.

            “When have you ever known me to be in a talking mood?” Andrew asks boredly, and then makes a sharp right to the staircase that leads up to the rooftop. He knows without asking that Neil will follow him.

            They walk in silence up three flights of stairs, and then out onto the broad, flat rooftop. The sun is glorious and golden and about to set. There’s a pile of cigarette butts near the edge of roof from last night. It’s as good of a juxtaposition as any.

            They sit on the edge of the roof and light up wordlessly. Neil is still restless, even fidgety, but he doesn’t say anything, just inhales the smoke that’s floating up from his cigarette. It is, as always, an inexcusable waste of good nicotine. 

            “It is my turn,” Andrew says finally.

            “Yeah.”

            “Why don’t you smoke?”

            “It’s bad for you,” Neil says. “Ruins your lungs for playing Exy. But the smell reminds me of my mom.” He doesn’t elaborate on this, and Andrew doesn’t ask him to. Today is not a day for sharing extra information.

            “Take a turn,” he says finally.

            Neil waits a long time—so long that Andrew thinks that maybe he’s saving his turn for later—before asking, “If you hate me, why did you stop me from leaving?”

            Andrew takes a drag off his cigarette and watches Neil’s smoke dissipate into the sunlight. “I only hate you ninety three percent of the time,” he says after a moment.

            “And the other seven percent of the time?”

            He exhales smoke into Neil’s face. “One question a turn, Josten. Why do you go running at night?”

            “Helps me sleep.”

            “So would a number of any other things.”

            “Yeah, well. I like to run.” Neil, who had seemed to be relaxing a little, pulls his phone out of his pocket, checks it, and then does it again a second later. Andrew watches him with hooded eyes. He’d ask about it, but it’s Neil’s turn. “What about the other seven percent of the time?”

            “The other seven percent of the time you are just interesting,” Andrew says. “Yes or no?”

            “Yes,” Neil says without missing a beat, and the combination of his lips and the five stories of empty space below them makes Andrew feel alive. _Feeling_ tastes like nicotine and frustration and falling. It tastes like Neil Josten’s smart mouth.

            When the sun has slipped its last few shining inches underneath the horizon, Andrew stands up. Neil follows suit, shaking out his stiff limbs and scrubbing the back of his hand over his mouth like that will prevent anyone from knowing what they’ve been doing.

            “Ninety-four,” Andrew says, and flicks his glowing ash into the hungry sky beneath them.

***

            The Foxes have won four games in a row, and Andrew couldn’t give less of a shit. Or least, that’s what he tells Bee when she mentions it during their weekly session.

            Aaron had come to sit in on this one, but had left early for an undisclosed reason (Andrew assumes that it’s to meet up with his idiotic cheerleader girlfriend, but if that girl is Aaron’s rooftop—if she makes him feel—well, maybe Andrew can let him have that just for today. He doesn’t want to fight with his twin in front of Bee anyway). Now it’s just the two of them, sipping their cooling cocoas and enjoying the silence between them. It’s one of those sessions where nothing really needs to be said; their silences have always been as comfortable as words for the same reason that Andrew doesn’t mind making small talk with Bee: she doesn’t require anything from him but the things he wants to give. That, for someone who is constantly being forced to give up more than he wants to, is a rare thing.

            But eventually Bee starts a conversation, probably because their session is almost over and she likes to end with a few words so that saying goodbye doesn’t seem abrupt (her words, not his). It inevitably turns to Exy, because everything in Andrew’s miserable life revolves around stick ball, apparently, and thus he has to express his apathy towards the Foxes’ recent winning streak.

            “Surely you care a little,” Bee says. “You’re a big part of why the team is doing so well.”

            That’s actually not untrue; for Kevin’s sake, Andrew has been trying a little harder in the goal these days. If the Foxes do well, Riko is losing, and if Riko is losing, Kevin is winning, and Kevin is winning, he’s also staying alive and in once piece, and that’s all Andrew has ever claimed to try and accomplish. So. Yes, he’s trying.

            “I am trying to care, and I am failing,” Andrew says blandly. “Talk to Kevin if you want to see Exy-related enthusiasm.”

            Bee shrugs. “I’d like to see you be proud of what you’ve accomplished.”

            “I have not really accomplished anything.”

            She sips her cocoa and watches the birds outside her window. It’s getting late. “Can I ask you a question, Andrew?”

            Andrew makes a noncommittal sound. Because Bee is Bee, she waits for a more definitive answer. Not quite irritated, but getting there, he says, “Do what you want.”

            “Does Exy make you feel anything? Is that why you don’t want to care about it?”

            She rarely asks questions that are so outright this late in the session, but he’s not really surprised. They haven’t done much heavy talking today, so he supposes they have to fit it in somehow.

            “I don’t care about Exy because I find it boring,” Andrew says. “That is all.”

            “So it doesn’t give you the same sort of rush that being on the rooftop gives you?”

            “I am afraid of heights, not of being hit in the head with a ball.” He thinks of kissing Neil on the rooftop, how afraid that had made him feel. How that felt like hanging from the rooftop by his fingertips. That is what feeling is, not standing the goal blocking every shot that comes his way. Exy comes easily to him. Feeling does not.        

            God, maybe Renee is right. He does love a challenge. He’s literally never going to tell her that he ever thought that, though.

            “Do you think that you ever could care about Exy?” Bee asks. Her expression is unreadable, and for a moment, he wonders if she really is talking about Exy.

            “I only care about it as long as it is useful to me,” he says, and then wonders if he, too, is really talking about Exy, and then wonders if he was telling the truth either way. Almost unconsciously, he half-hearted rubs the back of his hand across his mouth.

            When he leaves Bee’s office, the twilight sky is purpling into dusk, and an owl is heralding the moon from some hidden location on the campus green. It’s a short walk to Fox Tower, but a thought-crowded one nonetheless. Being with Bee usually empties his mind of his endless inner monologue, but today their conversation seems to have amplified it. No fault of hers, of course—he’s just second guessing himself, picking apart every thought he’s had in the past few days unless he’s no longer sure whether he ever felt anything at all, or whether he’s just making it all up in retrospect. Not for the first time, he wishes that his mind would occasionally oblige him by shutting the fuck up. No wonder he can’t feel anything—everything that he ever thinks has to be thought a thousand times, and then analyzed into oblivion until—

            Neil fucking Josten is doing stretches in the streetlight outside Fox Tower. Not for the first time, Andrew wishes the world would oblige him by making Neil disappear.

            Nonetheless. Nevertheless. Maybe it’s the dim twilight, maybe it’s Andrew’s distracted thoughts, maybe it’s the fact that Andrew is not in the business of denying things that are obviously true, and so he can appreciate that Neil’s ass looks _really nice_ when he bends over to stretch, but—

            “Shit form, Josten.”

            Neil freezes, and then straightens up. He smiles when he sees Andrew. No one in the history of the world has ever smiled when they see Andrew. Andrew is an empty room. Andrew is a hurricane. “You don’t know anything about running,” he says. “My form is fine.”

            Andrew shrugs. He’s not in a talking mood. “Yes or no?”

            “Yes,” Neil says, without hesitation, and walks out of the streetlight to stand in the darkness with Andrew. He waits, like he always does, for Andrew to lean in first.

            Andrew’s mind shuts off when he’s kissing Neil, and that makes Neil dangerous and useful and hard to ignore. Neil is going to leave—Neil is, sooner rather than later, going to die—but as long as he is right here, right now, Andrew doesn’t have to think. But when Neil is gone, Andrew will go back to smoke and whiskey and rooftops, and he will survive.

            He does not need Neil, but he’s a convenient drug while he’s here. That is what Andrew has decided.

            When he pulls back, Neil is still smiling.

            “Want to come running with me?” he says.

            Andrew scowls, takes a step back. “Ninety five,” he says, and when he walks into the dorms, Neil is still smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YESSSS THEY FINALLY KISSED!!!! MY BABIES i hope i did everything justice and nothing is rushed. I was literally so nervous to tackle this chapter but i think i'm satisfied???? idk tell me what you think. 
> 
> the song i imagined Andrew listening to on the rooftop when he has his earbuds in is Lay Me Down by Dirty Heads!! it's a good song and very Andreil-y, and i would totally recommend it!! and then the translation of one french line in this chapter: "je veux que tu te mêles de tes propres affaires en français aussi, Kevin" = I want you to mind your own business in French, too, Kevin. Thank you to ao3 user waaht for providing a better way to say that than the very clumsy phrasing i had before!!! my french is NOT good yall. ALSO if you noticed that before Neil was using the formal form of "you" (vous) to address Kevin and now he's using the informal/less respectful form (tu), ten thousand points to you!!
> 
> and then finally i'm not gonna do the tumblr plug today because i'm too tired and lazy to put in the links, but if you want to not be blindsided the next time i update late (which is literally never going to happen again bc i won't let it), following me on tumblr is a good idea bc you'll usually get a warning there. anyway that's all thank you for reading and being patient w me and commenting such lovely things i will see you in two weeks for the last chapter!!!!


	5. Even Heroes Have to the Right to Bleed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okAY so first let's address the elephant in the room, i.e., the fact that this chapter is two days late. IN MY DEFENSE!!! it was not because of anything else going on in my life or because i was procrastinating or literally anything except the fact that this chapter is really fucking long. like, the longest update so far. like, OVER TEN THOUSAND WORDS LONG. i just got carried away and i wanted to make it spectacular, so the reason why this is late is because i want to put out quality content, and apparently, also content that is really fuckign longgg. 
> 
> SECONDLY, i have (((finally))) answered all of the comments in my inbox from the past two chapters and thank you sososoo much to everyone who commented!!!!! literally comments can make my whole day and some of you are so freaking nice it makes me sob. so thank you very much and apologies for getting back to some of you so late. 
> 
> thirdly, some of dialogue and i think a few lines of narration in this chapter are pulled directly from the book and/or nora's extra content, so obviously, that is not my original writing, and credit must be given where credit is due!! you'll definitely recognize it when you get to it lol. and this not-at-all-ominous chapter title is from the song Superman by Five for Fighting lmaooo throwback. 
> 
> okay i think that's all!!! i'm very proud of this massive chapter, so have fun!! also keep in mind that this is indeed the last chapter!! also that the epilogue is coming this weekend ok now i'm done for real enjoy

“We’re going to the Semi-Finals,” are the first words Andrew hears when he wakes up. They are spoken by Kevin who sounds breathless and glowing and not unlike he just had an orgasm. He definitely didn’t, though—that’s just the affect Exy has on him.

            “Never,” Andrew says, rolling over and reaching for his armbands, “ever wake me up to tell me anything about Exy ever again or I will kill you.”

            Kevin rapidly takes three steps back, eying the armbands warily. Neil, who’s standing behind Kevin, silently reaches around the taller man. He has a Kit-Kat in his hand. Andrew scowls at him and then snatches it out of his hand.

            “We’re going to the Semi-Finals,” Kevin repeats as Andrew tears the wrapper open and breaks off one of the bars. “We are going to the Semi-Finals.”

            “Funnily enough,” Andrew says boredly, his mouth full of chocolate, “I did in fact understand you the first two times.”

            “You’re playing against the Trojans in your next game,” Neil says. “Kevin’s losing his goddamn mind.”

            “Is it because he does not have the spine to look Jean Moreau in the eyes again, because he has a massive boner for Jeremy Knox, or because he is so obsessed with Exy that the arbitrary label of ‘Semi-Final’ means something to him?”

            “ _We’re going to the Semi-Finals, Andrew_ ,” Kevin says. To say he looks overwhelmed would be an understatement.

            “I think it’s a little bit of all three,” Neil says, pulling Kevin away from Andrew’s bed and pushing him into a chair so he can have a meltdown in peace. “He’s kind of losing it. I offered to make him a kale smoothie and he didn’t even respond.”

            Andrew finishes his Kit-Kat and gets out of bed. It’s just occurring to him—and subsequently bothering him—that Neil knew exactly how to placate him after his rude awakening.

            “Andrew,” Kevin says.

            “What.”

            “Riko is going to be so angry.”

            “Do you trust me?”

            Kevin looks up at him. The number two on his face is stark against his skin, a mere inch away from his drowning green eyes. “I trust you. I fear Riko.”

            “Those two things are not contradictory,” Andrew says. “You will be afraid and you will do it anyway. Your job is to win. My job is to make sure you do not die. Do your job and I will do mine.”

            Kevin takes a deep breath and nods. He doesn’t say anything, but Andrew doesn’t need him to. Kevin is afraid, but Kevin is always afraid. He’s a wolf that thinks like a rabbit. Neil is a rabbit that thinks like a wolf. Andrew? Andrew is a whole different species entirely, a predator made of blood and darkness. He eats what doesn’t kill him.

            “Riko is a dickbag who can’t hurt you anymore,” Neil says. “You’re doing fine without him, Kevin.”

            “He hurts,” Kevin says. “It hurts.”

            And Andrew knows what he means, impatient and bored of everything as he is. He knows what it is to be hurt by someone who was supposed to be your brother. He knows what it is to be afraid. But all he says it, “And you will win anyway.”

            And then he strides out of the room to go check on Aaron and Nicky, leaving his two Ravens to comfort each other.

***     

            “If there are any— _and I mean any_ —shenanigans on this trip, do not think that I will hesitate to bench your asses,” Wymack says.

            “We can’t play if you bench us,” Matt says. Neil is sitting next to him, and snickers at his comment. Matt looks elated.

            “I’m aware of that, Boyd!” Wymack barks. “I won’t hesitate to sacrifice this game to keep this team in line!”

            They’re on the bus to the airport, and Seth and Kevin have been at such odds that Dan’s nearly cried out of frustration, Nicky has retreated to the very back of bus out of stress, and Allison has snapchatted so much of the fight with captions like “this is why i dumped him lol” that her story is probably five hours long. She’d broken up with Seth loudly and publicly the night before and then very purposefully sat next to Renee today, so when Kevin had tried to go over strategy, Seth had started a fight with him. Wymack has just taken matters into his own hands.

            “I’m serious!” Wymack is saying. “That goes for you especially, Gordan! I expect more from you! Who are you, Minyard?”

            “At least Andrew doesn’t start fights because his girlfriend dumped him for his shitty attitude and small dick,” Neil says loudly.

            Seth rounds on him with the expression of a wounded lion. “What, because he’s too busy starting fights because no one ever taught him to act like a human? Miss me with that shit, you little fag.”

            Neil grins at him, sharp and menacing. “Like I said,” he says, “a shitty attitude and a small dick. Work on your anger management issues, Gordan.”

            “I don’t fucking have anger management issues,” Seth roars.

            “Wow, Seth, why don’t I believe you?” Matt asks in a voice of exaggerated confusion. Dan elbows him to shut up but she’s snickering too. Andrew, who is not used to being defended, fights down the urge to punch Neil directly in his stupid, protective, opinionated mouth. The rest of the team is laughing, and Wymack looks helpless.

            In that moment, Neil feels like part of the team. Andrew isn’t one to have nebulous nostalgia for what could have been, but he knows that Neil, if given the chance, would have made a great Fox. And he knows that he’s not the only one thinking that, because Matt and Dan are exchanging a sad and significant look.

            Neil, for perhaps the first time in his life, will be missed when he leaves.

            Not by Andrew, though. Andrew won’t care when he’s gone.

            “Settle down!” Wymack barks. “Josten, if you can’t keep your mouth shut we’ll leave you behind. Gordan, sit the fuck down and do an attitude check. Kevin—stuff the strategy until later. Everyone else, just—just behave, all right?”

            “You’re asking a lot, Coach,” Andrew drawls, and Wymack stomps away to the front of the bus.

            Neil, half-hidden behind Matt’s broad shoulder, twists around in his seat to grin at him. Andrew tears his eyes away and scowls at the ceiling. If he doesn’t look at the idiot, maybe he’ll just disappear. But instead Neil’s laughter rings through the bus like a song stuck in Andrew’s head, and Andrew just ends up wishing Neil was sitting by him instead.

***

            By the time they reach the airport, Neil is no longer laughing. Instead, he’s nervous and quiet and fidgeting next to Matt without smiling at his jokes anymore. Matt, realizing that something is wrong, silently ruffles his hair and moves to sit next to Dan. It’s a tactful move that Andrew wouldn’t have expected from an overgrown puppy like Matt; he obviously recognizes that Neil would feel smothers by attempts at comfort and is giving him space. Still, Neil doesn’t look any happier. He keeps checking his phone and rubbing the cover of his passport, shifting in his seat uncomfortably all the while. Andrew watches him for a moment, and then, sick of the distraction, moves over to sit next to him. Neil looks startled, but not ungratified.

            “You are being annoying,” Andrew tells him. “Sit still.”

            Neil looks a little sick, but goes stock still in his seat. Right away Andrew knows that was the wrong thing to say; Neil is frozen, locked in place like ice. Like he’s trying to become a statue. Like he’s practiced being this still before. “I’m trying,” is what he says.

            “What are you afraid of?”

            “I’m fine,” Neil says, so quickly that even if it wasn’t obviously not true it would sound insincere.

            “Neil,” Andrew says, and then, when Neil just looks down at his feet silently, adds, “Abram.”

            It’s the first time he’s said Neil’s middle name—the only real name Neil claims to have—aloud. It hangs in the air between them like ripe fruit waiting to be picked, bursting with heavy potential. Neil looks up at him, startled. In the light coming through the window, the eyelashes that frame his impossibly blue eyes cast fine shadows over his cheeks.

            “What are you afraid of?” Andrew repeats, quieter, less aggressively.

            “The airport,” Neil says. His face flickers through unsettled, ashamed, annoyed, and finally settles back on tense.

            It’s such an unexpected and relieving answer that Andrew would have laughed if he could. It’s not that he doesn’t think that Neil has good reason to be afraid, but it’s good that this only means that the airport is a trigger of Neil’s, and there is no real impeding danger. Instead, he just says, “Why.” Neil doesn’t answer right away, so he adds, “I am taking a turn. Why.”

            “My mother and I,” Neil says, with the deliberate slowness of someone choosing their words very carefully, “used to move around a lot. Very quickly. Sometimes—to help us move faster and easier and without attracting notice—we had falsified documents.”

            Andrew is reading between the lines as rapidly as he can, but it’s not exactly hard to figure out what Neil isn’t saying. He knows Neil is from a mafia family; whether he and his mother were running errands for the mob or running from them, they weren’t doing it legally. And either way, Neil would have been fairly young at the time, as it must have been before his time with the Ravens. The fear of getting caught with illegal documents at an airport would have been traumatic for a kid like that, especially coupled with the memories whatever he saw during his time on the run.

            “My mom was always really stressed when we went through customs. I remember being really afraid. She never said what would happen if they found out our documents weren’t legal, but I knew it wasn’t good. I had dreams about getting caught and locked up and separated and tortured. And she—she got angry when she was stressed.” Neil stretches his hands out on his knees, face up. A long white scar stretches bright down the length of one of his palms. Andrew doesn’t know if it was intentional or not, but the implication of Neil’s words combined with the glimpse of the scar make a thrill of anger buzz hotly down his spine. It’s such an unfamiliar feeling that Andrew has to take it apart and examine it before allowing it to continue. Fear, apparently, is not the only thing Neil can make him feel.

            “Anyway,” Neil says. “I don’t like airports very much.”

            It’s an understatement so large that it could almost fall under the umbrella of the lie that is _I’m fine_. Neil seems content to let the matter rest at that, but the sick look still permeates his face like a spreading oil spill. Andrew looks at him for a moment with a bland expression that he knows Neil will not be able to interpret, and then says, “I am afraid of heights.”

            He’s startled Neil for the second time in a matter of minutes—the other man looks at him with the pleased, confused, vulnerable expression of someone who’s received an unexpected gift. Andrew wants to slap it off his face. Neil has no right to look at him like that. No one has ever been pleased to know anything about Andrew, and Neil shouldn’t be either.

            “I didn’t ask for a turn,” Neil says. His eyes are blueblueblue in the light from the window and Andrew can’t look away from them. It fills him with an impotent restless feeling, a desire to do something he can’t name.

            “I know.”

            They stare at each other for an eternal moment. The world has shrunken down to the two of them, sitting there on the too-big bus seat in the sunlight.

            “You don’t give things away for free,” Neil says, asking without really asking. The question is: _why?_ The question is: _why me? Why now?_

            The restless feeling fills up Andrew’s chest and he combats it with the strongest frustration he can feel. Neil has no right to ask him that. He shouldn’t ask that. He shouldn’t care _why_.

            “Give me a free turn later, then,” Andrew says flatly. “I don’t give a fuck.”

            He stands up and stalks back to where he’d been sitting before, his body alive with the wish that it was just the two of them on this bus, in this world. Maybe it would be easier to figure out what Neil does to him then.

            He’s beginning to understand why the court calls to Neil so strongly. He’s beginning to understand what it means to give that up.

***

            The next Semi-Finals game is against the Binghamton Bearcats. They’re a brutal and aggressive team the Foxes have played before and wished they hadn’t. They don’t care much about strategy, unless you could call their practice of recruiting players that are strictly over six feet tall a strategy. As unrefined as it is, though, it can prove to be effective against a team with smaller players like the Foxes—an injustice that Kevin rages against as if it were the proverbial dying of the light.

            Andrew doesn’t care much about any of that. He isn’t really counting the days by wins and losses. But every hour is closer to the one that will be Neil’s last with the Foxes. And every hour after that will be closer to the one that will be Neil’s last. Andrew’s newest addiction is a limited edition drug.

            It’s not Neil whose absence he’ll regret, but the _feeling_ that Neil injects into him with the precision of a needle. When he’s sitting next to Neil, he’s intensely aware of every point where their bodies are pressed together. When he’s kissing Neil, he can feel the rooftop adrenaline rush in every molecule. He can feel the whole world in his bloodstream. It’s the opposite of boredom, and if there is one thing Andrew loathes with greater force than he has loathed anything, it is the grey monotony he has been living in ever since rehab. He hates that his interest in the world was taken from him. He hates that Neil is giving him part of it back.

            So for Andrew, the second Semi-Finals game does not mark the last step between Kevin and victory so much as it marks a new kind of freedom for Andrew. If they win, Kevin will have the immunity from Riko he has always wanted, meaning that one more of Andrew’s tethers to life will be broken. One more step to collapsing into the nothingness he has always wanted. The nothingness that doesn’t thrill him the way it used to.

            He has a new drug now.

***

            The night before they leave for Binghamton, Neil and Andrew are on the rooftop. Neil is quiet and tired after midnight practice but he accepts a cigarette anyway and sits next Andrew on the ledge, their feet dangling over the darkness in unison.

            “Yes or no?” he finally mumbles into the stillness of the night air.

            Andrew thinks about it. What he thinks: This not-thing that is between them has an expiration date. Neil has an expiration date a little after that. Andrew has one a little after that, maybe. Maybe a long time after that. Everything will rot eventually, and there is no good reason that Andrew should be feeling anything from this not-thing that will end sooner than most other thing. What he says: “Yes.”

            Neil leans over and presses a kiss into the place when Andrew’s neck meets his jawline. Then he keeps inhaling the smoke from his unsmoked cigarette like nothing happened. It’s a stupid gesture, too tender and romantic for the two of them. It fills Andrew’s whole body with that restless, furious feeling again. Then Neil yawns, vulnerable and oblivious and exhausted, like he’s utterly unaware of the idiocy of his actions, and that’s quite frankly too much for anyone to put up with.

            Andrew reaches out and holds a hand an inch away from Neil’s head. “Yes or no?”

            Neil looks at him, confused, and then says, “Yes.”

            He’s trusting. He’s an idiot. He looks terrible in the glow of the streetlights and the moon. Andrew pushes Neil’s head down on Andrew’s shoulder and snaps, “Take a fucking nap so you don’t sleep through the game tomorrow.” He can feel Neil smiling against his shoulder like he thinks he knows something Andrew doesn’t. “I hate you.”

            “I know.”

            “I would kill you if I could.”

            “I know.”

            “I would push you off this roof if the thought of the paperwork I would have to fill out afterwards did not bore me more than you do.”

            “I thought I interested you?”

            Andrew blows out a long stream of smoke up towards the stars. “Ninety-six,” he says, “go to sleep.”

            Neil laughs and then there’s a long silence. Then, in the sacred quiet of them, Neil’s phone buzzes. He sits upright instantly and scrabbles in his hoodie pocket for it. Andrew only gets a glimpse of the screen—it looks as though someone has sent him a very short text, maybe just a single letter—but whatever it is, Neil’s stance changes instantly. He is the rabbit again. He is the sharp-smiled striker throwing himself in front of a microphone for a man he’s never met.

            “Abram,” Andrew says. Neil looks at him. His eyes are dilated. Andrew looks back him, and then just says, “Go to sleep.”

            There’s a terrible pause where Andrew detachedly wonders if Neil is going to get up and leave, but then he just stuffs his phone back in his pocket and lays his head back down on Andrew’s shoulder.

            Andrew could take a turn now and ask him what the text said, and they both know it. But he won’t, because Neil isn’t under his protection and his demons are his only. Neil isn’t Andrew’s. He never will be. So he just reaches up and puts a hand on the back of Neil’s neck, bringing him back down to earth.

            “Yes or no?” Neil mumbles into Andrew’s shoulder. And when Andrew says yes, he kisses down the length of Andrew’s neck until the joint of his neck and shoulder, where he nuzzles into Andrew’s skin and closes his eyes.

            Not for the first time, Andrew thinks that Neil Josten’s mouth is a force of nature.

            When his breath evens out and he melts into Andrew’s side, the first glow of the sun is pushing over the horizon. Andrew thinks that if someone were to look at them from behind, with the light of the sunrise silhouetting them against the sky, they would look like one creature, a slumbering monster with two heads and one heart.

***

            The end of the game against the Bearcats goes like this: Andrew shuts down the goal, and the last time his racquet smacks the ball away from the net, the buzzer turns red, and the Foxes, as a collective force, lose their goddamn minds. There’s stomping and swearing and screaming involved, but mainly, there’s Kevin bellowing “WE’RE GOING TO THE FUCKING FINALS WE’RE GOING TO THE FUCKING FINALS WE’RE—” to anyone who wouldn’t immediately be deafened by his voice.          

            The Foxes have won. And they’re going to the finals. It’s a thought as improbable as it is terrifying. They will have to face down Riko and the Ravens, and that means Kevin will have to play against his brother for the first time in his life. Andrew has to quite literally fight down the urge to ruin Kevin’s mood with this information, mainly because his yelling is becoming so obnoxious that even the refs are shooting him dirty looks.

            They spill into the locker room with the force of tidal wave. There’s yelling outside the building, which Andrew takes to mean that the Bearcat fans are not happy with the Foxes’ win. The rest of them are too jumped up on the high of victory to notice, but he knows it’ll make things difficult when they try to leave, and immediately checks for Neil. He remembers his dislike of loud noises, big crowds, and unfamiliar settings from the night at Eden’s Twilight. Neil is sitting in the locker room corner, somehow managing to look pleased and pained and terrified all at once. Matt is capering around him saying something about how he’s their good luck charm, and Neil is trying to engage but there’s something holding him back, and—

            It sounds like Kevin has gotten to the mental breakdown stage of coming to terms with their victory, so Andrew has to go deal with him, and—

            He can hear Neil’s phone ringing even from across the locker room, and—

            Kevin is saying _he’ll kill us he’ll kill us he’ll kill us Riko will kill us_ and—

            Neil’s face does not change at all when he listens to whoever’s speaking to him on the phone, his face does not change one bit, Andrew thought it would be something bad but his face does not change at all, and—

            Wymack is shepherding them all towards the showers, bellowing congratulations and directions like an over-exasperated elephant and Kevin stands and goes and—

            Two guards walk into the room, presumably to help them get through the crowds when they’re done showering, and Neil sees them and stands up because he doesn’t like security and—

            “Andrew,” Neil says, and the confusion and wrongness in Andrew’s head quiets because he sounds so normal. Something is off about tonight, Andrew does not feel right about this, but Neil’s eyes are steady and blue when they meet his so Andrew is suddenly able to finish his thoughts. “I know it was you that decided to come get me from the Nest,” he says. “I know it wasn’t Kevin that made that call.”

            Not unlike many of the things Neil says, it’s so disjointed from Andrew’s thoughts that Andrew can only look at him blankly.

            “So—thank you.” His eyes are as ice blue as the first time Andrew had ever seen him. His eyes are—

            Andrew doesn’t know what his eyes are.

            “You were amazing,” Neil says. And he turns away and Andrew goes into the showers and soon they will be on the rooftop and everything will be quiet again.    

            The guards aren’t there when they get back to the locker room, or maybe they are but Andrew just doesn’t see them in the jumble of taller bodies and confusion as everyone tries to pack up as quickly as possible and get back to the bus. He doesn’t like this; it’s too hard to keep an eye on everyone he needs to be keeping an eye on with the crowds and the shoving as soon as they step outside. Someone elbows him in the eye and he almost absent-mindedly strikes out and connects with hard flesh before moving on quickly, trying to scan the heaving crowd for his pack. He can see Nicky’s taller frame a few feet ahead of him, and Kevin is in the front of the Foxes with Wymack. It takes a longer time to find Aaron because he’s as short as Andrew is, but eventually Andrew spots a head of blond hair and an orange jersey up by Nicky. He can’t see Neil, but he knows that Matt is a little behind Andrew so Neil’s probably with him. And if he’s with Matt, Renee will take care of him.

            They pile onto the bus in a pile of sweaty, messy triumph. Most of the Foxes are sporting at least a bruise or two. Allison is wearing a swollen lip and a snarl; Renee’s knuckles are bloody and she looks fierce in a way she usually doesn’t. Andrew wonders—

            Matt climbs on the bus, and Neil is not with him.

            Time is a funny concept; Andrew knows it can fly by or slow down as it pleases. He has lived through agonizingly, eternally long moments and had to remember every detail. But he has never felt time stop in the way it does in that moment. Time stretches out and freezes, suspending them all in a second of disbelief like a dream. And then Andrew snaps free of it, and in the next moment he is standing in front of Wymack. For the first time in his life, he cannot remember. He cannot remember how he got there.

            “Sit down, Minyard,” Wymack says with the long-suffering patience of a parent. Andrew isn’t in the mood.

            “Neil,” he says, deliberately and with as much nastiness as he can when the world is wobbling on its axis, “is not here.”

            Wymack looks at him. He looks back.

            “Andrew, why do you—”

            “He is not here.”

            They have another silent stand-off, and then Wymack steps aside with a sigh. “Be careful out there, son.”

            “Do not call me that,” Andrew says, and steps out of the bus back into the dying chaos with the knowledge that Kevin will be on his heels in a moment. Sure enough, an obnoxiously tall shadow falls across his path a second later.

            “He’s going to be here somewhere,” Kevin says. “Neil is—Neil is tough, he’s okay.”

            That statement is so incredibly stupid that Andrew doesn’t bother to acknowledge it. Kevin must have sustained more balls to the head than usual today; they both know that if Neil is trouble, it’ll be the kind of trouble where being tough means as little as being alive. And if Kevin doesn’t have the creeping sense of unease that’s inching its way into worry that Andrew does, he must be braindead entirely.

            They make a brisk loop around the courtyard through the dwindling crowds and find nothing. There is white noise in Andrew’s head. Kevin is saying something but it doesn’t make sense because Andrew can’t put in the effort to put the words together in his mind—all his brain capacity is being used up to remember the way Neil’s eyes had met his so deliberately in the locker room and the careful way he’d chosen his words, and how—

            He shoves the thought away at the exact same moment that his foot hits something plastic that skitters away from him across the pavement. Kevin puts out his shoe to stop it, and Andrew snatches it up in a single impatient movement that makes his carefully balanced world teeter precariously on its course. It’s just someone’s phone, a little worse for wear after being trampled in the crowds, but Andrew has no use for it—

            “That’s Neil’s phone,” Kevin says, and his voice sounds like broken glass.

            There’s an apocalyptic silence. Almost all of the rioters have been dispersed by now. Andrew stares at the phone in his hand until it resolves itself into the shape of Neil’s phone. Kevin’s right, and Andrew missed it because he feels like he’s burning up inside and nothing makes sense and fifteen minutes ago he was looking at Neil trying to make sense of his stupidly blue eyes and thinking about how they would be on the rooftop together soon.

            “He would not leave that behind,” Andrew says flatly. The Ravens are trained to keep their phones on them at all times, and even though this isn’t the tracked one the Ravens gave him, the instinct had still been strong in Neil. And he’d been checking it so often the past few days—he wouldn’t have let it drop under any circumstances. That Andrew knows for a fact.

            “So he’s still here somewhere?” Kevin says, but his voice doesn’t even sound hopeful. They both know what this means.

            Andrew flips open the phone and first scrolls through Neil’s contacts, then his text messages. There’s a single message from an unknown number at the top of his timeline; the other messages are from the Foxes and a few from Jean.

            The unknown number had sent him a single number. A zero.

            Andrew’s heart does something painful and unfamiliar in his chest. He opens the conversation and sees that the unknown number has been sending Neil a countdown. The zero was sent a few hours past midnight that morning, at the same time Andrew remembers Neil receiving a text when they were together on the rooftop. And all those times he’d checked his phone and been nervous about it—

            Andrew clenches his fist around the phone, fighting the useless urge to smash it, and then clicks into the call history. Sure enough, there’s a call from an unknown number timestamped right around the time Neil had gotten the call in the locker room.

            The heaviness of a knowledge he doesn’t want to think about settles onto Andrew’s shoulders. He is Atlas, sentenced to hold up a world of sorrow he never looked for.

            “Take this back to Wymack,” Andrew snarls at Kevin, shoving the phone into the taller man’s chest before he really does smash it. “Tell him Neil would not have left it. Show him the countdown.”

            “You have to—”

            “I do not have to do anything,” Andrew says with such a force of viciousness that Kevin reels backwards. A spike of satisfaction stabs through him. He feels ugly inside, jumbled and unbalanced and mangled. His insides are the shape of the monster everyone thinks is.

            Kevin stumbles back towards the bus and Andrew’s mind numbly races through the past hour, picking it apart and picking it apart and trying to find where he’d gone wrong, where he’d let Neil slip through his fingers—his mind races through the past few weeks and trying to figure out where he’d gone wrong and let Neil slip into his body and mind and possess him like a drug so that now he feels the way he’s felt in Easthaven, heart racing and hands shaking, and, and, and—

            In the locker room, Neil had looked at him so deliberately, had said each meaningless word like it was important. Andrew’s mind whizzes back to the second time he’d ever talked to Neil, at the kick-off banquet, when Neil had met his gaze so blandly and lied about falling down the stairs; back to Eden’s twilight, when Neil had forcefully looked at him over the rim of his glass and denied having mafia contacts without breaking eye contact. It’s his way of saying things without saying them.

            What he was saying in the locker room was goodbye.

            And then Andrew is off, tearing through the stadium like he’s running from the devil himself, running he is the devil himself. He will tear this place apart brick by brick if it means he will find Neil—and when did Neil start meaning something to him? When did he start caring if Neil is gone or missing or dead or in a million pieces by now? Why does he care if Neil is bleeding right now? Why is his body burning up like this—his skin is like ice—this is no rooftop adrenaline rush, this is something else, this is being paralyzed—is this what fear is, _is this what fear is, is this what lo_ —

            If Neil Josten is dead, Andrew will kill him again just to be sure, because he never wants to feel this again in his life. Neil Josten had no right to sneak into his chest like that when Andrew wasn’t paying attention, had no right to weave himself in between Andrew’s ribs with his snarky humor and smart mouth and scarred body that turns so pliant under Andrew’s hands. All Andrew has left now is his fear and his gory beating heart that wants to be ripped out and abandoned on the dirty stadium floor along with Neil’s phone. The two of them will be the only proof that Neil ever existed at all.

             Neil is at ninety seven. Neil is at one hundred.

            He’s back on the bus and the other Foxes are talking around him, about him, to him, and he can’t make sense of anything they’re saying. He’s furious and lashing out and Renee is trying to talk him down, and—

            There’s no news. No one in the whole goddamn world has heard of a Neil Josten. Neil has disappeared like he’d always promised to, has been swallowed up by the earth, has been turned into an anonymous body and buried somewhere where Andrew will never find him.

            (And it doesn’t feel right to think that, because it seems only a second ago that Neil smiled at him under the glow of the streetlights while he was doing his stretches, only a second ago that he kissed a trail down Andrew’s neck and smiled into his shoulder, his eyelashes tickling Andrew’s skin. Andrew is unbalanced and livid and he _hates_ Neil Josten, hates him hates him hates him.)

            Hours pass without news. Andrew smokes a pack and hates every single drag because all he can think of is the way Neil breathes in the smoke without inhaling, and if Neil has ruined nicotine for him, he’ll—

            He smokes another and clings to the smell and spits it out and chokes on it.           

            It feels like a week has passed when Wymack finally rejoins them with his phone in hand. It can’t have been that long, because Andrew is wearing a watch that shows him what the date is, but it feels that long.            

            “Neil,” Wymack says, and everyone goes quiet. “Neil is in Baltimore.”       

            Into the silence that has frozen the Foxes, Kevin makes a sound like he’s dying. It is the sound the apocalypse will make when it happens.

            “Not Baltimore,” he says, “Not Baltimore, not Baltimore, not Baltimore, not—”

            “Kevin, he’s alive,” Wymack says, looking alarmed, but Kevin just makes another awful sound and turns away. He looks like he’s going to be sick.

            He knows something.

            He knows something.

            Andrew is on top of him, hands wordlessly pressing down on Kevin’s throat, because Kevin knows something, _he knew something_ and didn’t tell them, he could have helped them find Neil faster, and Kevin’s hands are scrabbling at his desperately and Andrew doesn’t even feel it, and Kevin is sobbing and gagging and making terrible wet sounds that are supposed to be words, and—

            He’s dragged off Kevin, but only because he lets them, only because Renee puts her hands over his hands and he lets go because he knows she doesn’t want to feel him squeeze, because he knows she’ll try and stop him anyway. Kevin is heaving and coughing, and everyone is yelling, but inside of Andrew there is a terrible, terrible quiet.

            “Tell me everything,” he says.

            And Kevin spills. “His father is in Baltimore—Neil and his mother ran away from him when Neil was ten—he’s called the Butcher of Baltimore—he tortures people for the Moriyamas and they ran from him because he was going to sell Neil to the Ravens but he found them when Neil was fourteen and he sold him to the Moriyamas anyway and killed his mom—he killed Neil’s mom—and now that Neil ran again he’ll want to kill Neil too to save face in front of the Moriyamas—if Neil is in Baltimore he’d be better off dead, _if Neil is in Baltimore he’d be better off dead_ —”

            It’s not everything, but it’s enough, and it means that Neil is alive and bleeding and hopeless and hurting somewhere, and Andrew is helpless—

            Neil is alive and terrified and cut into pieces somewhere, and Andrew isn’t with him—

            Kevin just keeps repeating that Neil would be better off dead than having survived an encounter with his father, that Neil will never be the same, that Kevin once watched the Butcher carve a man into a thousand screaming bloody twitching pieces and Neil is better off dead, Neil is better off dead.

            Dan and Wymack and Renee somehow get him to calm down, lay down, and put ice on his neck. Then they turn to silently the rest of the team.

            “Well, what are we waiting for?” Matt says impatiently. “Let’s go get Neil.”

            “I don’t if we’re legally allowed to—” Wymack begins.

            “They called you,” Matt says, his voice fierce. “That means he wanted them to. Let’s go get Neil.”

            “Nathaniel,” Kevin’s thread-thin voice says from the front of the bus. “His real name is Nathaniel Wesninski.”

            Andrew blinks slowly, and then stands next to Matt. “Let’s go get Neil,” he says.

***

            Neil is alive and apparently functioning well enough for them to see him, because the extremely obnoxious and unhelpful FBI agents are setting up a room for them to visit him. This is only allowed because Wymack spins them a story about the Foxes scouting Neil after his departure from the Ravens, and how he’d been staying with them for a few weeks to get a feel for the team dynamic, and how now that the Ravens have dropped him, they’re the closest he has to family. It’s bullshit, but it’s believable.

            Maybe because it could have happened. If things had turned out differently.

            Anyway, there’s an altercation between Andrew and an FBI agent that results in Andrew getting handcuffed to Wymack because the agents are bored and frightened and have nothing better to do. Andrew can’t even bring himself to care about that. He’s used to authority figures exercising petty displays of power. He doesn’t care what they do to him as long as they bring him to Neil.       

            They don’t call him Neil, though. They call him “Nathaniel,” or “the Wesninski boy,” and they talk about him like he’s a criminal instead of a soft-smiled runner who does stretches outside at night and kisses Andrew like he’s holy. The agents obviously do not know the first thing about the hurricane that is Neil Josten.

            He’s dragged off with Wymack to move the bus, because the FBI are still trying to keep this bust under wraps so they can catch the Butcher’s inner ring by surprise, and a giant orange bus isn’t very subtle. Wymack is wearily frustrated when he chides Andrew for trying to fight an FBI agent—Andrew ignores him largely because he knows that Wymack’s had a soft spot for Neil ever since Neil told Kevin that he was the best in the League, and the coach knows why Andrew did what he did.

            And then—

            They’re getting back into the elevator to rejoin the other Foxes when Andrew hears someone say, “They just took the Wesninski boy upstairs; we’re sending extra personnel up there now,” and he takes off _running_. Out of the elevator, up the two flights of stairs and towards the doors behind which Neil is waiting. His legs are burning but they’re too slow, and Wymack is bellowing in protest behind him, and all Andrew can think is that there is no way for him to know whether Neil is alive and breathing behind that door until he gets through it—

            He barges into the room like a tsunami, shoving past the FBI and their weak protests of _one at a time_ , and heads for the figure that’s standing in the middle of the room, slender and upright and completely alone. It’s not until he sees Neil lunge forward that he realizes the FBI have followed him into the room; one second, he’s feeling the breeze of a fist fly past his ear, and the next, the man behind him is reeling back, and Neil is hunched over his hands in what is unmistakably silent agony.

            “Don’t,” he grits out between clenched teeth, and it’s only then that Andrew sees the bandages covering his face and hands. Whatever damage has been inflicted upon him, it must make Riko’s games look like hopscotch.

            Andrew gravitates towards him like iron filings towards a magnet; his hand flies to the back to Neil’s neck and forces them both to their knees. Neil follows his pressure obediently, but he’s shaking under Andrew’s hand. That soft, invisible movement is the only testament to whatever terror he’s been through in the past twenty-four hours, and it hits Andrew like a cement block—this tender, trembling boy inches away from him was almost taken from him. This moment almost never existed.

            Neil looks up from his bandaged hands and meets Andrew’s gaze. His lips part, and before Andrew can wonder what he’s going to say—what he could possibly say, what there is to say that’s not written in blood on his face—he says, “They could have blinded you. All that time fighting and you never learned to duck?”

            It’s so overwhelmingly idiotic—so overwhelmingly, quintessentially Neil—that Andrew can’t even reply. His chest is filled with painful throbbing and restlessness and fullness, and Neil did that to him, _Neil did that to him_ —

            He starts with the bandages on Neil’s face. He needs to see what the damage is, needs to see what he needs to inflict on the Butcher and his men in return. If Neil has suffered, the least Andrew can do is witness it, because fuck if he doesn’t know how much worse pain is when it’s silent.

            The cheek he reveals first is scored with deep, narrow, crisscrossing cuts. There are stitches—lots of them—and the carnage that was once Neil’s face is so severe that it looks like that’s the only thing holding his face together. There’s little doubt of why Neil’s father calls himself the Butcher—Neil’s face has been carved up like a piece of meat with ruthless finesse.

            The other side of Neil’s face is much, much worse. Andrew knows that before he even sees it, because Neil flinches the second Andrew pulls at the gauze, and when he peels it back—

            Neil’s face is an abandoned battlefield. Someone has gone down his face as brutally as possible; Andrew doesn’t know what they used to hurt Neil like that, but the skin is burned, it is charred, it is melted. Riko’s tattoo has been erased and replaced with burns that look so fresh Andrew’s surprised there isn’t heat coming off of them. Andrew didn’t know skin could even look like that.

            Everything inside him goes very still.

            The other Foxes are reacting, trying to get a look, trying not to see, but before Andrew has the threaten anyone, Wymack tells them _don’t_ in a voice so forbidding Andrew couldn’t have made the word sound more terrifying himself. He doesn’t look around, though. He can’t take his eyes off Neil ever again. The last time he did that, Neil came back looking like this.

            Andrew won’t let that happen again.

            He replaces the gauze as carefully as he can, and lets his hand drop back to Neil’s neck, clutching his hoodie like a tether, like a lifeline. As long as he can feel the warmth of Neil’s skin against his, he knows this is real.

            Neil is looking at him, possibly for a reaction, his maimed face unreadable. Then: “I’m sorry.”

            The two words send a tidal wave of fury through Andrew’s body; he is lit up, incandescent, raging at the idea that Neil has the audacity to sit here and apologize after what he’s put Andrew through in the past twenty four hours, after Neil’s body is been treated like a carving block, after Neil has faced his greatest fear and somehow survived. Andrew’s hardly even aware of pulling his arm back for a punch, but it happens—one second his fingers are tangled in the strings of Neil’s hoodie and the next, they’re curled into a fist, begging to be slammed into Neil’s face. Neil has no right to kneel here in front of Andrew and ask for forgiveness. No fucking right.

            Nonetheless—

            Nevertheless—

            Andrew lowers his hand, slowly, softly. He will not be the next one to add to Neil’s collection of scars. Not now. Not ever.

            “Say it again,” he says with savage precision, “and I will kill you.”

            Behind him, one of the FBI agents makes an indignant noise and says, “This is the last time I’m going to say it to you. If you can’t stow that attitude and behave—”

            “You’ll what, asshole?” Neil snarls, so swiftly that Andrew can imagine the agent flinching, and something deep inside Andrew relaxes. That part of Neil—the smart-mouthed idiot who can’t help but a pick a fight with authority figures—has not been burned away, at least. There is something of Abram that is still intact.

            “The same goes for you, Nathaniel,” another agent says, and Andrew just about loses what he has left of his mind. They have no right to call Neil Nathaniel, not after Andrew’s question about Neil’s real name in Eden’s Twilight had struck such fear into him, not after the person who gave him that name just finished ripping him to shreds, not after— “That’s your third strike. A third misstep, and this is over. Remember you are only here because we are allowing it.”

            Something inside Andrew’s chest shatters, and he moves to stand up, fury roaring for blood behind his ribs. They have no right to treat Neil like that. They know nothing about what he has seen. They know nothing about what it means to lose him. Andrew’s fists are already clenched, and he can imagine the crunch of bone—

            Neil’s hands land light as butterflies on either side of his face. Andrew can just barely feel the brush of his bandages, the way he’s cradling Andrew’s cheeks _so carefully_ , like Andrew is something he doesn’t want to break. The irony of it is sickening. But what makes Andrew settle back down is the sheer trust of it, the blind faith Neil has that Andrew, a murderer, a monster, a broken thing, will not hurt him again when he has already been hurt so much, when it would be so easy to do.

            When Andrew is still again, Neil sends the agent behind Andrew a glare of paralyzing, ice-blue fury. “Don’t lie to a liar,” he says coldly. “We both know I’m here because you have nothing without be. A pile of dead bodies can’t close cases or play the money trail with you. I told you what those answers would cost you and you agreed to pay it, so take this handcuff off of Andrew, get your man out of our way, and stop using up my twenty minutes with your useless posturing.”

            There’s a long, frozen silence, and then someone—Andrew doesn’t see who because he refuses to look away from Neil for even a second—unlocks his handcuff. Andrew draws his hand close to his chest and flexes his fingers.

            “So the attitude problem wasn’t an act, at least,” he says. It’s the first thing that comes to mind that doesn’t seem utterly useless to say out loud.

            “Nothing about me was an act,” Neil says wearily. “I wasn’t telling you the whole truth because it was too dangerous.”

            Andrew meets his gaze and waits.

            “I would have said goodbye properly if I’d had more time. They were in our locker room.”

            “They who?” one of the agents snaps, and Neil switches to German in mid-sentence so fluently that it takes Andrew a minute to catch on that he’s changed languages at all.

            “Those weren’t security guards that came for us. They were there for me, and they would have hurt all of you to get me out of there. I thought that by keeping my mouth shut I could keep you safe.” His hands hover over Andrew’s bruised face. “I didn’t know they’d staged a riot.”

            “You knew,” Andrew says, “that they were coming. I saw the countdown on your phone. And you did not run.’

            “Because if I’d run, they would have found me anyway. And I wanted to spend my last days with you, not on the run.”

            Andrew’s fist clenches uncontrollably in Neil’s hoodie. “Shut up.”

            “Am I at ninety-seven yet?” Neil’s eyes are clear, hopeful, desperate.

            “You are at one hundred,” Andrew says raggedly. His eyes are dry but stinging, and he blinks the feeling rapidly away. “What happened to your face.”

            Neil’s body shudders under his hands but his voice is steady when he says, “A dashboard lighter.”

            Nicky makes the same gagging sound Kevin had when Andrew had choked him, and Neil turns to look at him. The rest of the Foxes catch a glimpse of his face as he does, and the reaction is explosive. Kevin shrinks away against the wall, a hand clamped over his own tattoo. The gesture is so repulsively selfish that Andrew can’t even bring himself to be angry at it. Matt, on the other hand, lunges towards Neil as if to protect him, but Dan sensibly holds him back.

            “Jesus, Neil. The fuck did they do to you?”

            Abby approaches them, hands already rummaging in her first aid bag, but Andrew snarls at her wordlessly so fiercely she stops in her tracks.

            “Get away from us.”

            “Andrew,” she says, like she’s talking to a wild animal. “He’s hurt. Let me see him.”

            “If you make me repeat myself you will not live to regret it.” His vision is short-circuiting, his head is filled with white noise. If anyone touches Neil right now, he would bite their hand off if he hand to. He will not let Neil get hurt like this again, and he’s the only person that he can trust not to do so.

            Neil reassures her with a few words Andrew can hardly make sense of, and then the world shrinks back to just the two of them again.

            “Did they tell you who I am?”

            “They didn’t have to. I choked the answers out of Kevin.” He waits for a reaction, and when there is none, adds, “Guess your family was mafia after all.”

            Neil lets out a tired laugh.

            “Where is your father now?”

            “My uncle—he’s my contact in England—he executed him.” Neil rests two fingers against Andrew’s chest, right over his heart, as if to demonstrate how it’d happened. He’s shaking again. “I spent my whole life wishing he would die, but I thought he never would. I thought he was invincible. I can’t believe it was that easy.” His voice is wondering, like a child seeing a magic trick for the first time. It would be an insane reaction to anyone else, but to Andrew it’s only understandable.

            “Was it easy? Kevin told us who he worked for.”

            “My uncle said he was going to try and negotiate a ceasefire. I was supposed to go back to England with him, but because my father beat him to finding me, I might be traded back to the Ravens as part of their treaty.” Andrew feels another hot spike of anger drive through him at the thought, but he doesn’t say anything. “It’ll all go to shit if any of you have told them about who he worked for, though.”

            “No one’s said a word to them since they said we couldn’t see you.”

            To say Neil’s face is shocked would be an understatement. For a moment, he can’t even force words out, and then finally he says, “I—but why? I’m a Raven. I don’t play with you, I’m only here because you came and got me for Kevin, and my presence here was dangerous to you all. Any of you could have gotten caught in the crossfire. You got hurt last night because of me. Why would they protect me now?”

            There are many reasons, and maybe to someone else it would be obvious, but Andrew knows that Neil hasn’t seen it yet, even though the rest of them have. “You are a Fox,” he says.

            There’s a sharp intake of breath from Neil, and then he’s babbling, trying convey something too big for words, trying to apologize and beg and explain all at once. “Andrew, the FBI want to take me away to the Witness Protection Program so my father’s people can’t find me. My—my uncle wants to take me back to England so I can stay out of the American mafia, my father’s bosses want to give me back to the Ravens, and—and—I just want—I don’t want—” he takes a deep breath, closes his eyes. “If you want me to leave, I’ll go.”

            Andrew stares at him for a long moment, and then says in English, “You aren’t going anywhere. You’re staying with us. If they try to take you away they will lose.”

            And all hell breaks loose.

***

            After what feels like an eternity of fighting with the FBI, it’s Wymack’s argument that finally wins.

            “Neil Josten is a valuable potential athlete for Palmetto State, and if you force him to disappear against his will, thereby eliminating a lucrative asset of the university, you may just find yourself with a very nasty lawsuit on your hands,” Coach hisses in an agents face with such poisonous force that Andrew can feel it across the room. And because it’s always money that’s the most useful motivator, the FBI relent where they hadn’t relented for the Foxes’ friendship and devotion. Neil will be taken in for official questioning, and then released to rejoin the Foxes in Palmetto. And Andrew will be allowed to sit in on the questioning, because quite frankly, everyone decided it would be bigger hassle to try and separate them.

            The questioning is long, thorough, and relentless. The FBI ask Neil to recall places, names, and details from his very early childhood all the way up to his stay at Fox Tower. They question his reasons for doing everything, sometimes even over something as petty as a phone call or text. They show him pictures and ask him to identify them, including pictures of the people who had tortured him on the way to Baltimore.

            The one good thing—perhaps the only good thing—is that Neil’s answers allow Andrew to fill in the gaps of the story he already knows. Neil tries to keep the Moriyamas out of it as much as he possibly can, and to the outside listener, it would sound like they’re merely a wealthy family that patrons a successful if somewhat cruelly run Exy team. Andrew, however, can fill in the blanks himself with he already knows. And the complete picture is not a pretty one: Neil’s childhood had been filled with fear of and abuse from his father, and Neil recounts several graphic stories of watching his father torture and kill people. Exy was the only bright spot in his life; his mother would take him outside of Baltimore to play on Little League teams, and Neil would revel in the freedom from his father the court would provide. When he was ten, his father found out about his talent at the sport, and made plans to sell him to Moriyamas in exchange for a larger territory, and a higher place on their chain of command, prompting his mother to take Neil and run. For the next four years, Neil and his mother moved from place to place, changing their names, stories, and appearances with every location, desperately trying to stay again of the vengeful mafia lord at their backs. But when Neil was fourteen, his father had finally caught up with them, and had tortured and killed his mother in front of him before forcing him to burn and abandon her body. Then Neil had been sold to Ravens, and spent the next few years in the Nest, training, watching games, and being tortured by Riko, who delighted in a toy so young and tender. In his freshman year of college, he’d officially started playing for the Ravens.

            After that, it’s more of a behind the scenes look at the things Andrew had witnessed during his time with Neil. Neil explains that he’d started standing up to Riko as a way to get back at his father for his mother’s death, but had never dared to do it so publicly until that first press conference where he’d stuck up for Andrew. When he’d learned about Riko’s vendetta against Kevin, he’d realized that either Riko—and by extension, Neil—would continue his reign, or Kevin would overturn him. And because Kevin was his friend and had been kind to him, and because he wanted to prove that Riko—and by extension, the Moriyamas and Nathan—were not all-powerful, and could be escaped once and for all, he chose Kevin. He knew it would mean giving up Exy forever, because there was no way the Moriyamas would ever let him play for another team, and probably giving up life entirely, because either his father or the Moriyamas would be angry enough to track him down, but he did it anyway, because it meant that Jean and Kevin would have a chance at living and playing on. One of his mother’s old connections worked at the Nest, and helped smuggle him and Jean out safely, and the rest, as they say, is history.

            The whole story takes hours and hours to tell, mainly because there are a thousand questions for every anecdote Neil relates, but when it’s done, Neil is a free man. He signs the papers that legally change his name to Neil Josten, and together, he and Andrew walk out of the FBI headquarters and into the sun.

            On the bus, Andrew asks Neil if he’s going to go back to England with his uncle.

            Neil sighs. “No. I don’t think he’ll make me, either. But if I refuse him, he’ll probably just negotiate the ceasefire and fuck off back to England. He’ll cut all ties with me. That call was supposed to be a one-time thing.”

            “So no safety net if this goes wrong.”

            “No safety net,” Neil agrees.

            “And the Moriyamas?”

            “I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. They might be more open to negotiation after the ceasefire. And once I recover, I’ll still be able to play, so at least I’ll be worth something to them.”

            Andrew is too tired to ask any more questions, and Neil has answered enough questions for a lifetime anyway, so he just leans back in his seat and closes his eyes. Neil’s head is on his shoulder, carefully balanced to avoid doing damage to his face. Andrew’s mind, for the first time in a long time, is quiet.

            “Andrew.”

            “What.”

            “I meant what I said in the locker room.”

            Andrew waits.

            “Thank you for coming to get me from the Nest. I don’t know why you did it, but I’m glad you did.”

            “Look where it got you,” Andrew says harshly.

            “Yeah,” Neil says, “look where it got me. For the first time in my life there is good in my life, and not just bad.” When Andrew doesn’t say anything, he adds, “Andrew, I’m being serious. Thank you for everything. And I’m sorry for not telling you everything sooner. I wish I could have.”

            There’s a long silence. Andrew opens his eyes. It’s almost evening, and Neil’s hair is glowing red on Andrew’s shoulder in the sunset.

            “You told me enough,” Andrew says finally. “You told me the truth about what matters.”

            Neil looks up at him, his eyes tired and hopeful and soft. There is so much that is still uncertain about the future of the man Andrew has his arm around, but right now, in this moment, there is just the two of them, and everything is quiet, and that is enough. Andrew isn’t worried about what will happen, because he knows that while he is still breathing, Neil will never go back to the Ravens. Riko Moriyama will have to tear Andrew limb from limb before that happens. And Andrew never did fall apart easily.

            “Abram,” Andrew says, and Neil shudders, not in a bad way. “These are truths: sunrise, Abram, death. They do not change. Your face may change, and your name may change, but these things stay the same. That is what matters, and that is what you told me. You owed me nothing more. We are even now.”

            Neil looks at him for a moment longer, and then, slowly, slowly, so as to not tear his stitches, he smiles. And it’s funny, the way that Andrew has gotten used to Neil smiling at him. People don’t just smile when they see Andrew. It doesn’t happen.

            And now it does.

            “Neil Abram Josten,” Neil whispers when he puts his head back down on Andrew’s shoulder, and it sounds like hope. It sounds like one hundred and ten percent. It sounds like the restless feeling that permanently lives in Andrew’s bones now.

            It sounds like home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHEW THAT CHAPTER IS LOOONG!! i hope you enjoyed it!! honestly andrew's pov of what happens in baltimore are my favorite ever fics to read (i've probably read every single one that's been written lol) so i really had to put that in there. i hope i did it justice!!! thank you everyone for reading, and i will see you this weekend for the last installment of this fic aka the epilogue!!!


	6. Epilogue: This is My Kingdom Come

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okaY so THIS IS THE END this is the last "chapter" and by "chapter" i mean that this is not really a chapter it's like one third as long as a regular chapter because we just had to resolve like two things and wrap things up. also it's only been a few days since the last update and i just don't have the ability to crank out 10k in that amount of time but whatever i dont have to explain myself y'all knew this was an epilogue??? why am i still talking lmao go enjoy the chapter and i can be emotional at the end. 
> 
> (((chapter title from Imagine Dragons' song "Demons")))

“Does orange suit me?”

            Andrew steps into the frame of the mirror and examines Neil’s reflection beside him. “It looks terrible on you. Just like every other color.”

            Neil smiles at him like he thinks Andrew meant to say _yes_. It fills Andrew with a sense of impotent irritation, because he meant what he said. Orange clashes with Neil’s hair, and he looks like an idiot, and Andrew could look at him in that Fox jersey all day if he could. “I think I look great.”

            “You would.”

            Matt comes bounding around the corner with his arms full of Exy gear—a Fox racquet, a Fox helmet, and a spare Fox jersey. “Does it fit? I have all your other stuff, too.”

            “It fits perfectly,” Neil says.

            “You look great,” Matt says fervently. “It suits you much better than red and black.”

            Neil grins at him like Matt just told him he won the lottery. When he smiles now, his still-healing scars stretch tight and pink across his face. It looks painful, but when Andrew asked about it, Neil said they don’t bother him anymore. Which was not quite an answer to the question, but it was enough. “Let’s go buy everything, then, shall we?”

            The three of them carry the gear to the counter. As Neil gets everything rung up, Matt chatters on excitedly about how fun it’ll be to have him on the team, and how the upcoming season is going to be their best ever. For once, Andrew doesn’t disagree with him—Neil is an excellent player, but more importantly, he’s popular with the Foxes. With Neil and his passion on the team, they’ll be more united than ever. He doesn’t say any of that, though. He just watches Matt and Neil scoop up the bags of Fox gear and talk about the new Trojans lineup.

            Outside, the sky is fading into a milky purple twilight, and a cool breeze caresses the six inches of bare arm in between Andrew’s arm bands and tank top. Beside him, Neil shivers in his hoodie. He doesn’t go without long sleeves much these days; the doctors said he should keep his scars out of the sun to make sure they heal properly and don’t darken. Andrew’s thinking of buying him a pair of matching arm bands for when it gets warmer; he thinks Neil would like that.

            A sleek black car whizzes past them on the street, and then suddenly slows and backs up. Andrew’s instantly alert, and without even looking at Neil, knows he is too. There’s just a refocusing of attention that Matt lacks, a constant awareness of potential threats that comes with the experience of having once been prey.

            The car door opens, and a well-suited man with dark glasses steps out. It’s so terribly cliché that Andrew nearly laughs.

            “Nathaniel Wesninski,” he says.

            Neil goes tense, but his face doesn’t change. Matt, a few paces ahead, has stopped in his tracks and is looking back, a furrow between his brows.

            “Yes,” Neil says, not quite a question, not quite an answer.

            “The lord would like to speak with you. If you could follow me?”

            It’s not that they didn’t know this would be coming. It’s not that. It’s just that—some part of Andrew had hoped that it would not. It’s the stupid, soft, reckless part of him that’s been infected by Neil and his idiocy, but—still. This is a hurdle he knows Neil does not want to have to jump. This a hurdle that might break Neil’s neck. But they can’t jump it together. The Moriyamas are not the FBI; there are no rules that say they can’t hurt innocent bystanders. If Andrew tries to push his way into this particular interrogation, neither of them will walk out again in one piece.

            _I’m not expecting anyone to cry at my funeral. Being chopped into pieces and distributed into various dumpsters while significant amounts of money change hands is more my style._

            If this conversation goes badly, Andrew will never see Neil Josten again, and the world will not remember him.

            “I will hold your bags,” he says, and reaches out a hand for Neil’s gear.

            “Thank you,” Neil says. He hands the bags to Andrew and then, briefly, pointlessly, squeezes his wrist. Like the way he’d casually pressed a kiss onto Andrew’s jaw on the rooftop the night before Baltimore, it’s a stupid gesture that’s too tender for the ragged edges of the two of them. His scars look soft, almost blurred in the purple light. “I’ll see you both in a bit.”

            “Neil—” Matt says, and then breaks off and shakes his head. “Just—we’ll be waiting for you.”

            “Thank you,” Neil repeats, and steps into the car. His narrow shoulders are tense, and his light grey hoodie shines palely against the darkness of the inside of the car. He looks back once, quickly, with a barely perceptible flash of sudden fear that makes Andrew’s chest twist into a painful, furious knot. And then the door closes behind him.

            “Feel free to return to your residences. If Mr. Wesninski returns, he will be dropped off at the Palmetto State dorms,” the man wearing dark glasses says courteously. “We would not want to keep you waiting out here in the cold. Have a good night.”

            “Josten,” Matt snarls, “his name is Neil Josten.”

            Andrew, at that moment, has never been more appreciative of Matt Boyd’s existence. The man just looks at him with faint surprise, and then repeats, “Have a good night,” and gets into the front seat. The dark car glides away as smoothly and abruptly as it had arrived, and the two of them are left standing on the sidewalk with the bags of Exy gear dangling uselessly from their arms, shell-shocked and furious.

            “God _damn_ it,” Matt says with incandescent force. “God _damn_ it.”

            Andrew clenches his fists around the handles of the bags, his chest tight and frozen with anger. He swore he’d never let Neil slip out of his grasp again, and he’d just let him walk directly back into the lion’s den. He disgusts himself.

            “I should not have let him go,” he says. “They will trade him back to the Ravens.”

            Matt swears again, a long and well-thought stream of swearing that sounds like he’s been saving it for a while. Then he says, “There was nothing you could have done, Minyard. They would have taken him over your dead body. And that would have just made him miserable.”

            “Then that is what I should have done,” Andrew says simply. “He would be miserable anyway if they took him back to the Nest.”

            Matt looks at him curiously. “Andrew,” he says, and then pauses. Searches for words. Tries to pull them out of the dusky lilac air. “You really don’t get it, do you? If they killed you, that would take precedence over whatever they did to him. They could tear him limb from limb, and if you were safe, that would still give him some happiness. This way, Neil still has a chance of walking out of that car unharmed. If he strikes a deal with—with—with you know who, he still has a chance at the happiness we both want him to have. If you intervened and got hurt or killed, he would never forgive himself even he walked out okay.”

            Andrew stares at him. The words are so utterly senseless that for a moment, Andrew almost wonders if Matt is speaking a different language. But—but he’s not, and so Andrew can only stare at him blankly. Matt looks back at him, and for a moment, almost smiles. And then he turns away.

            “Come on,” he says. “Let’s get back to the Tower. We have to be waiting there for Neil when he gets back.”

***

            The twilight has faded into night by the time Andrew sees him. The Moriyamas must have dropped him off a couple blocks back, because he’s walking, quickly and with his chin tilted up. The streetlights turn his hair near-orange in the surrounding darkness.

            The sense of pure, pure relief that encompasses Andrew when he sees Neil Josten walking towards Fox Tower cannot be described. The pure _feeling_ of it is so strong that he’s not even sure what it is he feels at first. He’s still not sure what he feels. All he knows is that Neil makes it happen, and Neil is not dead, and Neil is alive and walking and in one piece, and he does not look like he is coming back to say goodbye.

            He rises from the still sun-warmed concrete step he’d been sitting on in front of the dorms, and stands up as Neil approaches the Tower. Matt had gone upstairs to explain the situation to the other Foxes, and so it is just the two of them, nearing each other in the quietness of the glowing streetlights.

            When they’re only inches away, Neil slows and stops. He is not bleeding. He is in one piece.

            “Yes or no?” he asks.

            Andrew wants an explanation. He wants Neil to tell him what happened, and why the Moriyamas let him walk out alive, and whether or not he’ll be allowed to join the Foxes in the fall. But mainly, Andrew _wants_ Neil to kiss him in the soft darkness when the world feels small enough to be filled by only the two of them.

            “Yes,” Andrew says.

            And so Neil kisses him, very gently and with parted smiling lips, and Andrew takes Neil’s scarred face in both hands and kisses him back. And they are alive. And that is enough.

            When they go up to join the rest of the Foxes, Neil does end up explaining. Ichirou had wanted a reason to let him live, he says. Neil, of course, had explained that once he fully recovered, he would be a very valuable and lucrative player for any team, and he was more than willing to give the Moriyamas a generous percentage of his earnings once he went professional. Ichirou had told him that he wanted Neil playing for the Ravens, not just any team, because he’d seen that Neil could be dangerous and unpredictable, and he wanted to keep an eye on him.

            “ _Fuck_ no,” Matt says explosively at this point in the story. “You are _not_ going back there, Neil, I swear to _God_ —”

            “Oh my God, let him finish,” Dan says, and he subsides into sheepish silence.

            Neil just laughs and explains that he’d given Ichirou a long and involved list of reasons why it would be better both for Neil and for the Moriyamas if Neil did not go back to the Ravens. Riko’s abusive ways were sure to be exposed sooner or later, he’d said, especially since three Ravens had flown from the nest, and journalists were sure to be curious as to why. When Ichirou coldly countered that by asking him whose fault, exactly, it was that three Ravens had managed to escape, Neil had added the argument that if he went back to the Nest, Riko was likely to disfigure him permanently as a punishment like he had with Kevin, making Neil a much less valuable professional player for the Moriyamas in the long run. That seemed to get Ichirou listening, so Neil had finished by saying that he, Jean, and Kevin would all be willing to pay the Moriyamas a generous percentage of their paychecks once they all went professional, and wouldn’t it be better to have stakes in many different teams rather than just one? That way, the Moriyamas would be profiting nearly no matter how the season turned out.

            There’s a long silence when Neil pauses. Everyone is breathless.

            “And so he’s letting me live,” Neil finishes, “and I’m staying with the Foxes, and Kevin and Jean aren’t going back either, and we’re going to be okay, we’re going to be okay—”

            Andrew has not heard those words from anyone and believed them until this moment, but he knows Neil would not lie to him. _Okay_ is such a relative term that to someone else, Neil’s words would be untrue, but to Kevin, and Jean, and the Foxes, it is not a lie. Neil is alive and free and surrounded by people who would die before they hurt him, and so matter how many scars he has on his mind and body, he is going to be okay.

            The Foxes are, as ever, explosive in their celebrations—every sports team that lives in Fox Tower can probably hear their cheers—but for once, it doesn’t bother Andrew as much as it should. But he doesn’t partake—he just reaches behind Matt’s back and gently, quickly, pointlessly squeezes Neil’s wrist.

            Neil will understand.

***

            The rooftop is usually quiet at this time of night, but tonight Andrew is listening for the sound of footsteps that will come from down below any minute now. He’s sitting far back enough from the edge that when he tries to crane his neck and see the ground, the blackness is so complete that he can’t tell when the roof ends and the sky begins. But over the edge, he knows there is a pool of light from the streetlamp that turns the pavement golden and that he cannot see from here.

            He exhales smoke into the black air and watches it dissipate in the direction of the stars. Neil had officially signed the papers to be a Fox today—the last step in a long string of efforts to bury Nathaniel Wesninski for good, and unearth Neil Josten in his place. But as happy as Neil had been to do it, it’d also made him jittery and unable to sleep. If Andrew had to guess at the cause, which he will not do, because he’s not interested in psychoanalyzing an idiot, he would say that the permanence of the action had frightened Neil. For someone who’s spent most of his life on the run, changing his name, staying out of the spotlight, and being beaten down, it’s a big step. One that Neil had been ready to take, but a big step all the same.

            So Andrew had wordlessly shoved him out the door with his running shoes when it became apparent that Neil would not rest until he burnt off some energy, and had gone up to the rooftop with a pack of cigarettes to wait for him. It hadn’t been a bad night to do it; Andrew’s demons are far from gone themselves, and some time in between going to bed and kicking Neil out for a run, he’d fallen into a state of numbness where his mind picked over the most meaningless details again and again. Getting out of the dorm helped that. He’s feeling something again, even if it’s just the anxiety of being so close to the edge.

            Neil’s footsteps sound out a slowing rhythm on the pavement below; Andrew slides closer to the edge just in time to see him jog to a stop in the glow of the streetlight. He’s slender, silhouetted in gold, his chest perceptibly heaving even from Andrew’s height. Andrew’s chest aches ferociously at the sight of him.

            Like he can sense Andrew’s presence even from such a distance, Neil’s eyes are naturally drawn upwards towards the rooftop, his gaze scanning the darkness for Andrew’s form. But even an eagle-eyed runner can’t see him from where he sits, so Andrew flicks his lighter on, briefly illuminating his face in a flash against the dark. Neil, the idiot that he is, smiles stupidly and brilliantly at the sight of him.

            “I’m coming up,” he calls up, his voice still ragged from running. Andrew is unreasonably angry at the sound of it.

            “I do not care what you do.”

            “Light a cigarette for me, okay?”

            “I would not do anything for you,” Andrew calls down boredly, already drawing out a cigarette from the pack and cupping it from the wind. The silence really is complete up here. It’s a weeknight, so not even the obligatory campus parties are raging. It feels like just the two of them exist in this dark and silent world.

            Neil salutes him sarcastically with two fingers and then walks into the dorm. It usually takes him between fifteen to twenty minutes to shower, change, get water and a protein bar for himself, and a candy bar for Andrew, and walk up the multiple flights of stairs to the roof. Andrew doesn’t mind; waiting is what he does best.

            Seventeen minutes and thirty seven seconds later, Neil sits down because him and silently passes him a Milky Way in exchange for a lit cigarette. They have their routine down pat by now; there’s no fumbling or awkwardness, just the silent agreement of mutual contentment.

            “Yes or no?” Neil mumbles around a mouthful of protein bar.

            “Yes,” Andrew says.

            Neil tastes like chocolate and nicotine and Gatorade. He tastes like stupidity. He tastes like everything inside of Andrew being quiet.

            Andrew shoves Neil’s still shower-damp head down onto his shoulder and says, “One hundred and one.”

            “Not possible.”

            “And yet somehow, it is, with you.”

            Neil laughs against Andrew’s shoulder and closes his eyes, his eyelashes curling delicately against his skin. Andrew grinds out his cigarette and, in the dark, where no one can prove he ever did it, allows his mouth to curve upwards a few bare millimeters.

            They are not okay by most definitions of the word, but they are alive, and it is enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THAT'S ALL FOLKS this fic is over!!!! thank you so much to everyone who has read this, whether you just binge read it now that it's done or whether you've been here since the beginning!! and a special thank you to everyone who has ever left a kudo or comment or a nice message in my tumblr inbox about this fic you guys honestly don't know how encouraging and inspiring you are!!! I'm truly very happy with this fic and how it turned out and i hope everyone else is too :D
> 
> I WILL keep writing fic, (i got some questions about that on the last chapter lol) although i might take a few weeks off until my school lets out because i'll be quite busy until the end of may. My next fic will probably be a shorter one than this, but it will still be an andreil fic, so watch this space!! if you want to stay updated on when the new fic will be out/what is going on in my life/just want to watch me reblog posts at the speed of light, you may check out my tumblr [here](http://iaquilam.tumblr.com) i would love to have you :)) and again, thank you so much for reading this fic!! i am so happy to have shared it with you :D

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! i already have the whole fic outlined, so hopefully i'll get chapter two typed up and published fairly soon! if you want to bug me about hurrying up with that/cry about the Foxes/listen to me scream into the void/have a chat, follow me on [tumblr](https://iaquilam.tumblr.com/), where you can also find and reblog a [moodboard](https://iaquilam.tumblr.com/post/157424424070/better-than-a-grave-or-a-hearse-by-iaquilam-what) for this fic.
> 
> EDIT: it's been brought to my attention that i very foolishly forgot to provide translations for the french parts! (disclaimer: i am definitely not a fluent french speaker; i'm relying on a few years of highschool french and google translate for any french included in this fic. full apologies to fluent french speakers if i totally mess it up, feel free to correct my shit grammar.)  
>  _“Français, s’il te plait,”_ = "french, please"  
>  _“Je dois aller, mais j’espère nous pouvons parler encore, oui? Le roi ne vous prendra pas si c’est la dernière chose que je fais. Au revoir, Kevin.”_ = "I have to go, but I hope we can speak again, yes? The King will not take you if it is the last thing that I do. Goodbye, Kevin."  
>  _“Oui, au revoir,”_ = "Yes, goodbye."


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